Early morning fire heavily damages large Portsmouth home

PORTSMOUTH — A fire ripped through a large home on Vanderbilt Lane early Sunday, causing extensive damage to its upper floors and sending dozens of firefighters from five different departments to the site near the Sakonnet River.

The house’s owners, Peter and Vicky Kyriakides, both escaped safely. They were the only occupants of the 5,618-square-foot, four-bedroom home at 410 Vanderbilt Lane.

“The alarm woke us up,” said Mr. Kyriakides as he sat inside a vehicle parked on the street that was still crowded with fire trucks and police cars around 8:45 a.m. “The office area somehow caught fire — a candle, possibly, a computer or something. We’re really not sure.”

He saw the flames and then called out for his wife: “‘We need to get out of here.’ And, we did.”

Mr. Kyriakides, who’ve lived there for about 17 years, said he didn’t know what the couple’s plans will be as yet. “We’ll see,” he said.

Portsmouth Fire Department Assistant Chief Howard Tighe said firefighters first received a call for service around 4:30 a.m. 

“When they showed up the full, third floor of the house was on fire,” he said. “They met the two occupants coming out the front door. The fire didn’t extend anywhere.”

However, it wasn’t an easy fire to fight, he said.

“It became very labor-intensive due to the nature of construction of the home. It’s a very big home, a lot of different rooms and areas that they had to get into. So, we had extensive work to do,” said Assistant Chief Tighe.

Portsmouth relied on four other communities to provide mutual aid — fire departments from Middletown, Newport and Bristol, as well as the Naval Fire Department.

“The state fire marshal and the local fire marshal are here now investigating, trying to determine the cause,” he said. “Nobody’s hurt, no injuries — just a lot of work. I would say it took a good two hours to get it under control.”

The home’s location — far down from East Main Road and accessed only by following several winding streets — presented another challenge.

“It definitely got a good head start on us,” he said. “No wind, so that helped. The bigger part is that nobody got hurt.”