VanTassell home total loss in fire

The home of Melanie VanTassell, the town’s public welfare director, was destroyed in a fire yesterday morning, Fire Chief John DeSilva reported.

Within hours of the news, the community began rushing to support one of its most popular residents.

Town officials announced yesterday that collection stations had been set up both in Sanbornton’s town office building on Rte. 132 and at the Tilton Town Hall to aid the VanTassell family.

DeSilva said a call came in regarding smoke in the area of the homestead on Calef Hill Road at around 10 a.m. from someone driving by on Interstate 93. “We got the call shortly after 11 a.m.,” the chief said, but he added that the fire could have been burning for an hour before that.

“By the time we got to the house it had kind of collapsed on itself,” he said. Adding to the problem is that the home is on the end of a rural Class VI road so it was difficult to get to with snow banks on either side of the dirt road.

Once firefighters arrived, there was not much to do by then but to make sure the fire didn’t spread to an outbuilding or a nearby barn where VanTassell kept the horses she is known to love dearly. None of the animals was reported to have been hurt.

No one was in the house at the time of the fire, DeSilva said, but a family dog may have lost its life in the structure.

The chief described the house as a small two-story wooden structure.

VanTassell, who had gone out to run some errands, was on the scene when the Sanbornton Fire Department and a truck from the Tilton-Northfield Fire Department arrived.

DeSilva said she was very upset. He thought she and her immediate family were staying with relatives in Northfield for last night.

The chief said he was aware of a community effort to aid the family but did not have the details.

“They lost everything, the entire building and the contents are a total loss,” he said.