PLAINFIELD — Judith Belyea was in her historic farmhouse home on Route 120 on Sunday morning when she was awakened by what sounded like a boom, so she didn’t pay much attention.

“I thought it was thunder and lightning in the storm,” Belyea recalled.

But then a few minutes later Belyea’s neighbor from across the road called and said “get out of there quick, your barn is on fire.” Belyea got up to look out the window and saw her barn, only feet from her home, engulfed in flames.

Moments later the neighbor, Pam Wilson, who had already called 911, “threw on some clothes” and rushed across the road to Belyea’s home — skirting the driveway because the heat from the fire was too intense — and entered through the front door as she could see the flames from the barn now beginning to lap up against the side of the house.

Wilson saw Belyea downstairs on the phone calling 911.

“The only thing on my mind was to get her out of there. I said, ‘C’mon, Judy, we’re going to walk over to my place,’ ” Wilson said Monday.

Just as they got inside Wilson’s house they heard fire trucks arrive from the Plainfield Fire Department, Lebanon Fire Department and departments from Cornish and Windsor.

It was not until then that Wilson glanced at the clock, which she hadn’t checked since she was awakened by what she described as an “explosion that shook the house.” The time was 3 a.m.

Eight pieces of equipment and about 20 volunteer firefighters spent the next five hours working to put out the blaze. By the time they cleared the scene at around 8 a.m., the historic barn that Belyea said dated to 1811 was burned to a heap of ashes, only a few beams and metal roof sticking out of the remains.

“We were able to stop it save the house,” which stands about 12 feet away from where the barn was, Plainfield Fire Chief Bill Taylor said. “But the barn was a total loss, including all the contents.”

Although the barn had long ago ceased to be used as a farm barn, Belyea’s family renovated the structure shortly after they purchased the 21-acre property, located almost exactly 5 miles south of Colburn Park in Lebanon, in 1985.

Over the years the family celebrated numerous gatherings in the barn, including weddings, kids’ Halloween parties and events for Belyea’s accounting business. A photograph of the barn was used to illustrate the Plainfield Historical Society’s barn tour in 2022.

A neighbor was also using the barn to garage his cars over the winter while he spent time in Florida, Belyea said.

But Taylor said when police reached out to the owner to inform him that he had lost two vehicles inn the fire — a Porsche and a Mercedes van — the owner replied that he was also storing a third vehicle — an Audi — in the barn.

But when firefighters sifted through the rubble left by the fire, they found the remains of only the Porsche and the Mercedes and no sign of an Audi. Could the fire have been so intense that it destroyed all evidence of the third vehicle?

No, said Taylor.

“There’s always something left over. Brake drums, brake rotors and the engine block don’t usually melt away,” he said.

Wilson said the barn door was open on Saturday and she could see the Audi parked inside the barn from the road. The Porsche and Mercedes were stored further back in the barn, she said, and not visible.

Although Taylor said the initial speculation was that the fire started might have started with battery chargers attached to the vehicle, now he is not so sure, calling the cause “suspicious.”

Taylor said he has reached out to the state fire marshal for assistance in investigating, although on Sunday the fire marshal was tied up in New London investigating a fire there over the weekend.

The matter of the missing car from the scene is now under investigation by Plainfield police, Taylor said. Planfield Police chief Anthony Swett did not return a phone call for comment on Monday.

Belyea said that although there was damage to a room on the south side of the house that she used as an office, there was no damage — even any caused by smoke — to the rest of the house.

“They did a great job of saving the house,” Belyea said of the firefighters. “They even took my computers out of the office and brought them over to me across the road.”

Also maybe lost in the fire was Belyea’s 2022 S 580 Mercedes, which was parked in the driveway and got scorched by the flames, she said.

“It looks pretty bad,” Belyea said. “It may be totaled.”

On Monday, Belyea, 81, was back at work at Evergreen Recycling in Wilder, which she owns.

She is also back in her home.

“It’s a pretty big house and the rest of it was closed off pretty well so there was no smoke,” Belyea said.

Contact John Lippman at jlippman@vnews.com.

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