News

Controversial Canaan home rapidly burns to ground

Hudson-Catskill Newspapers

RED ROCK - A Red Rock man was transported to Albany Medical Center with burns when a fire consumed his home on county Route 24 Friday evening. Arthur Tieger’s residence has long been a center of controversy because of what some neighbors considered an unsightly accumulation of collectibles.

Fire companies were dispatched to 250 Route 24 at 9:18 p.m. Friday. Red Rock Fire Chief Melissa Eigenbrodt said the fire was fully involved when they arrived on the scene. A former lumber yard, the building burned to the ground rapidly, she said.

Canaan Town Councilman Stephen August, who is also an emergency medical technician, said, “The materials inside were so tightly packed that even as they poured water on it, fire would spring up again.” Highway Superintendent Bernhard Meyer was called in to use an excavator to take down a part of the building that was still standing because it represented a hazard, August said.

The sole occupant, Tieger, who reportedly suffered burns to his hands, was able to drive himself up the road to a neighboring residence, August said.

Town Historian Anna Marie Dunton said there had been “stuff piled around the house [so that] it looked like a junkyard from the outside.”

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