Dedham Woman Saw Fire Spark on Westwood-Dover Line

A building on the grounds of the Jewish Community Center's Grossman Camp was , after a fire destroyed the structure Wednesday afternoon.

Fire officials from Westwood, Dover and Medfield responded to the one-alarm fire before 5 p.m. Wednesday, when they were eventually able to get the fire under control and extinguished. 

The Grossman Camp lies on the Westwood-Dover line, and utilizes about 75 acres of land from Hale Reservation; the building that was ignited was used for storage and camp activities, according to fire officials.

No one was inside the building at the time of the fire, and no injuries were reported. A cause for the fire is still being investigated.

Bu the damage was done, both to the building and to the emotions of JCC administrators. 

"This is a camp of the JCC of Greater Boston, and all I'm going to speak about right now is that we're extremely grateful that no one was hurt," said Fiona Epstein, Vice President of the JCC of Greater Boston, who was at the scene Wednesday. "We are very grateful to the firefighters, and we're confident we'll be moving forward."

When asked about cost estimates from the damage, Epstein said, "We're still assessing."

The call for the fire originally came from a passerby who was touring the grounds of the Grossman Camp on a self-guided tour. 

"It was a pile of leaves on fire," said Melissa, a Dedham resident who asked her last name not be used. "I tried to put it out myself, and that didn't work. I tried to just stomp it out."

She then called the managers of the camp, and during the call, realized the nearby building had caught aflame. 

"(Officials) were saying that the pile of leaves had a suspicious odor," she added. "It feels suspicious."

Dover Deputy Fire Chief David Tiberi, who investigated the scene alongside the State Fire Marshal, said it was not immediately clear what started the fire.

"We don't know the cause yet, were still looking to see," he said. "There was a lot of debris floating in the air."

When asked about a potential suspicious odor that was described the Dedham resident, Tiberi said, "There is something on the roadway. There's a little pile of leaves burnt in the middle of the road, and it has a citronella smell or something like that. It had an odor."

Westwood Deputy Fire Chief Mike Reardon said Westwood responded to the scene after initially attempting to respond to what was believed to be a brush fire. The location of that supposed brush fire, he said, was in fact the scene of the fire at the Grossman Camp. 

"We went out originally for a brush fire out on Dover Road," said Westwood Fire Captain Bill Wood. "Anything up in Grossman Camp, we're an automatic response."

Tiberi said that, even after further investigation, it would be difficult to determine what came up with the fire. 

"I don't think we'll ever come up with a cause," Tiberi said. "I think it will be undetermined. We're going to pull it apart and see what else we find."