House fire claims 80-year-old man
BY PETER B. BRACE INDEPENDENT WRITER
Ahouse fire that originated on the first floor of 107 Hummock Pond Road killed the sole occupant of the building at the time, 80-year-old Peter Miller. The fire burned about 40 percent of the structure early Sunday morning.

ROB BENCHLEY/The Independent A bouquet of flowers rests on a rock in front of 107 Hummock Pond Road yesterday afternoon.

Nantucket Fire Chief Mark McDougall said that the Nantucket Fire Department responded to a 911 call about the fire from the Nantucket Police Department at 4:50 a.m. on April 29.

"On arrival, about 30 to 40 percent of the building was burning," said McDougall. "We sent the first company in for a primary search, but the heat forced them out just for a second. Then we went back in for a primary search and found one victim."

Miller, a resident of the house who was found in a first floor bedroom, was believed to have been sharing the house with several other tenants. McDougall said he was relieved that no one else was home at the time of the blaze.

"Our main concern is it's a rental property and usually there's a lot of people in the building," he said.

One Nantucket firefighter sustained a minor knee injury and was transported to Nantucket Cottage Hospital for treatment.

McDougall said the fire started on the first floor of the house. He declined to comment on what caused the fire or where it started, preferring to wait for the state fire marshal's office to finish its investigation, which he expected to wrap up by the end of this week. McDougall did say that his crew could not find any smoke detectors or audible alarms that could have helped save Miller and the building.

Though the fire only torched just less than half the house, heat and smoke pretty much finished the job. Of the three vehicles found in the driveway at the time, only one sustained minor damage to its paint from the heat of the fire, said McDougall

"The fire took about 30 minutes to knock down totally," he said. "Forty percent of the house was structurally damaged. The rest was pretty much damaged from smoke

and heat damage." I