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Owners of burned camp ‘devastated,’ but aim to rebuild

Camp Happy Hours is seen on the shore of Lake Placid in this photo from Essex County property records.

Michael and Stacia Takach found out from a drone photo that their camp on Lake Placid’s western shore was on fire Sunday night.

“A couple friends from around town had heard the fire call come in, I guess, and at that time no one was really clear what camp it was,” Michael said the next day. “And then ultimately we saw a photo that someone had taken with a drone.”

“The camp was a total loss,” fire Chief Douglas “Torry” Hoffman said Monday. “By the time we got there, it was completely on the ground.”

The three-bedroom cottage was called Camp Happy Hours; in the past it had been called Camp Happy Hour, without the “s.” It had been built sometime between 1910 and the 1930s — Michael said records aren’t clear exactly when. The Takaches, who live in Lake Placid and also own the Stagecoach Inn and a rental cabin called the Bear Den, bought the camp in fall 2016 and used it both as a personal getaway and as a vacation rental.

“We rented it for eight to 10 weeks a summer, and then we used the home personally for as much as humanly possible,” Michael said.

The renters were mostly the same families every year.

“Obviously we’re going to have to find them other accommodations this year,” Michael said.

His wife Stacia spoke through tears Tuesday about the emotional impact of the loss.

“The house was everything to us,” she said. “It was not just us, though. That house is a historic home. … Some of our vacationers, the reason it was so important to them was that they grew up in that house. … It was a 70-year-old man who was sleeping in the bedroom he grew up in.

“We are devastated that it is gone.

“It is heaven for us, and we hope it will be again when we rebuild it.”

No one around to report

The blaze would have been spotted sooner at a time of year when more people were around, Hoffman said. But the large lake was still frozen, and no one is at the boat-access-only camps like this one, halfway up the western shore.

The people who spotted the flames and called the fire department were way down at the Lake Placid Lodge, about a mile-and-a-half away in the lake’s southwest corner, Hoffman said. When he arrived at the Lake Placid Lodge, “You could clearly see the glow of what appeared to be a structure fire from that location,” he said.

“By the time that anybody noticed this fire, it was long into the progression.”

Hard to get to

The fire department got the call at 8:07 p.m. Sunday. Twenty-three fire department members responded.

“When the call came in, we weren’t sure where the fire was,” fire driver Greg Hayes said. Therefore, they sent trucks to two different locations: the area around the Lake Placid Lodge and to the state boat launch in the lake’s southeast corner.

The LPVFD has fire boats, but they are not yet in the water since the lake is still frozen. What was needed was an airboat, which hovers on an inflatable cushion and is propelled by a large fan. The Lake Placid fire department doesn’t have one, but the neighboring Saranac Lake Volunteer Fire Department does, so it was called for and deployed two trucks and a boat.

The Lake Placid airboat could safely carry a maximum of six people at once, including the pilot, Hoffman said.

Once firefighters arrived on site, “We basically extinguished what was still burning using portable water pumps, drawing water right out of the lake,” Hoffman said. “It had spread. It burned a couple trees.”

Hoffman guessed that recent rainfall and snowmelt running off of Moose and McKenzie mountains prevented a full-on wildfire, “but the trees that were right next to the structure were heavily burnt.”

He said he saw no evidence that anyone had been at the site recently.

By the time the firefighters had mopped up the blaze and returned across the lake to their firehouse, it was 3 a.m.

Hard to find cause

On Monday, Hoffman said, the LPVFD returned to the scene with investigators from Essex County Emergency Services and the New York State Police.

“There’s nothing left to really try to investigate it,” he said, but they gathered what evidence they could and turned the case over to State Police.

Also on Monday, Michael Takach hiked out to the property to see for himself what was left.

“There’s absolutely nothing left besides the chimney,” he said.

He said he has “no idea” what might have caused the fire, and he said investigators told him they probably won’t be able to determine the cause and origin since the building was so thoroughly destroyed.

He added that he is grateful to the Lake Placid and Saranac Lake firefighters for getting to the site under some “pretty tough circumstances” and quenching the flames.

Intend to rebuild

Camp Happy Hours was insured, and Michael Takach said he and his wife intend to rebuild it.

“We certainly look forward to rebuilding the camp back as much as possible to its original condition, as quickly as the insurance will allow,” Michael said.

Fires are rare at the camps that ring Lake Placid. Hoffman said he doesn’t remember fighting one before in his 20 years on the fire department.

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