Firefighters spray water on a fire on what’s left of the Goldsmith Mountain Hunting Club’s camp in the woods off Goldsmith Road, which burned Sunday afternoon. (Photo provided — Dustin Fuller)

A fire blamed on a cooking mishap destroyed a large hunting camp in the town of Franklin Sunday afternoon.

Firefighters were called to the  Goldsmith Mountain Hunting Club’s camp, located in the woods off of Goldsmith Road, around 2:15 p.m. By the time they reached the remote site, the two-story, wood-frame camp was gone.

“It was a huge building, about 28 (feet) by 64 (feet), and it was down to the ground,” said Tim Woodruff, the Bloomingdale Volunteer Fire Department’s first assistant chief. “All the walls had caved in before we got there. We couldn’t save anything.”

Bloomingdale fire Chief John Houghton said the club’s members had gone out hunting in the morning. They came back in the afternoon and were cooking when the fire broke out.

“They were in watching football actually, and they went back into the kitchen and there was a fire,”  Houghton said. “They tried to extinguish it themselves. That was unsuccessful. So they tried getting stuff out of the camp, four-wheelers and that kind of stuff, and they called 911.”

Multiple fire departments responded to the scene, but it wasn’t easy for them to get there, Houghton said.

“It was a long haul,” he said. “All the way out to the Goldsmith Road is the far extent of our territory, pretty much. You went down Goldsmith Road about 2 miles, and on the right-hand side there’s a bridge that goes across the river, and up that road was about 4 more miles. It was a hunting camp road, so it was rough. The trucks fit on it, but you couldn’t go fast.”

Firefighters set up a tanker shuttle system, drawing water from the nearby river to supply an on-scene port-a-pond. They doused the flames using three or four hose lines and 16,000 gallons of water, but the building was a complete loss.

“The people there knew that was going to be the outcome, they said,” Houghton said. “They said it was a raging fire. By the time we got there, there was nothing left.”

No injuries were reported. Houghton said a “cooking mishap” was to blame, but he said he didn’t know any more specifics of what happened.

“It was an accidental cooking incident,” Woodruff said.

The Bloomingdale, Paul-Smiths Gabriels, Saranac Lake and Saranac fire departments responded to the scene. Firefighters from Wilmington and Saranac Lake manned Bloomingdale’s fire station during the call. The Lake Placid Volunteer Fire Department stood by at Saranac Lake’s fire station. Tupper Lake firefighters manned the Paul Smiths fire station.

Houghton said his department’s members returned from the scene by roughly 6:30 p.m.