Groundhog Sparks the Great Farmington Hills Fire of 1991

Many of you have heard of the Great Farmington Village Fire of 1872. It devoured several blocks of buildings along Grand River, east of Farmington Road, and destroyed many of the original township records.

It was not a good time for fires. The Great Chicago Fire took place in the fall of 1871. These fires can be traced to unusually dry weather and human carelessness. There is another fire, not quite as well known, but with a story well worth telling.

We were home enjoying a pleasant summer afternoon in 1991, when a couple of our young children came running into the house yelling that our neighbor’s barn across the road from us was on fire. My wife told them “I’m sure that if there was a dangerous fire, Uncle Roy (our neighbor) would have asked us to call the Fire Department.” To which they replied, “He did!”

At that, we ran to the door to see a great plume of black smoke rising from the small building made to store horse tack, and Roy running around frantically with a garden hose in his hand. We quickly called the Fire Department and in no time they blocked off the street, connected their hoses and started to work on the fire.

Roy lived in a house built about 1867 by Ezra Cox and the property contained numerous old out-buildings clustered close together. The big fear was that the fire would spread to the other buildings causing even more loss.

Roy was not in the greatest shape, and all the wear and tear of running around with his hose, combined with the heat of the fire and the stress finally caused him to take a break and sit down. Being curious, I went over to talk to him to find out what happened.

Like many owners of old buildings, Roy was plagued with woodchucks. These animals burrow large tunnel systems around building foundations that in some cases threaten the very existence of the buildings. Worse, they seem to taunt the property owners into an endless chase. That day, Roy was chasing after one such impudent animal when it stood still at the corner of the barn in question, and as Roy approached, dived into one of his holes.

Roy yelled at him “I got you now!”. Then he ran for a can of gasoline and a match. He dumped the gas down the hole and threw in a match after it. There was a sudden burst of flame, and instantly the whole barn was on fire.

This building had no real foundation. Its wooden posts went straight into the ground, and there was only a dirt floor. Roy kept horses, and this building was the place where their bales of hay were stored. His daughter-in-law had a son from a previous marriage, and all of his worldly possessions, including his large Playboy magazine collection, were also stored here.

The maze of woodchuck tunnels under this building acted as the perfect way to get the gasoline fumes to all parts of it at once, hence the quick mini-inferno.

Roy and I sat talking for over an hour as the firemen put out the flames. The building and its contents were a total loss. Nevertheless, the diligent fire fighters prevented the fire from spreading, and continued pouring water on the site as long as any faint plume of smoke could be seen. In the area where the magazines were, one fireman was spraying them down while leafing through them one page at a time, just to be sure the fire was really out.

Finally the fight was over, and the Fire Department packed up their hoses and prepared to leave. While sitting there, amongst the wet grass and light smoky haze, Roy and I looked over where the barn had recently stood, and in the middle of it, we saw a woodchuck pop his head up out of a hole, look around, then scamper off into the woods.