title: Hoarder Homes:Piles of Hazards for Firefighters
author: Ryan E Pennington
description: Ryan Pennington is a Firefighter/Paramedic for the Charleston Fire Department in Charleston West Virginia. He is currently assigned to Station 6 that houses Quint 456/medic 436. He has over 20 years of combined Fire, Rescue, and EMS experience. Ryan started with a local volunteer department and continued through EMS to spend five years as a Critical Care Paramedic. Ryan transferred to the career fire service in 2003 and has worked for the City of Charleston since 2007. Ryan is the Leading Authority in Heavy Content Response. (Also Known as Hoarder Response). He is a highly sought out instructor, speaker, author, blogger and podcast host. Ryan has lectured and trained thousands of firefighters and fire departments from across the United States and internationally both at their departments and at large conferences like Firehouse Expo,FDIC, Firehouse World, and FDIC Atlantic (Canada). He has been published in FireRescue Magazine, Fire Engineering, Firefighting in Canada Magazine,Firehouse, among others and has been interviewed on the top firefighter training podcasts and radio shows in the country. He is the founder of ChamberofHoarders.com which is the leading Heavy Content Response Online Training Academy for fire departments worldwide. This website has the best heavy content online training with Heavy Content Firefighting Academy, heavy content fire news, case studies, interviews, podcasts, and more fully dedicated to training firefighters on the risks and best practices of heavy content fires. Ryan blogs and podcasts about the views of a street level firefighters at JumpseatTraining.com. To Learn more about Heavy Content Firefighting and options for training your fire department, go to ChamberofHoarders.com or Contact Ryan at jumpseatviews@icloud.com and on twitter at @jumpseatviews
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  PROLOGUE
  
  
  _Raccoon Times, July 24, 1998_
  
  
  **SPENCER MANSION DESTROYED IN EXPLOSIVE FIRE**
  
  
  **RACCOON CITY** —At approximately 2 A.M. Thursday morn-
  
  
  ing, Victory Lake district residents were awakened by an explosive blast that
  thundered through northwest Raccoon Forest, apparently caused by a fire that
  swept through the abandoned Spencer mansion and ignited chemicals stored in
  the basement. Due to delays from the police barricade set up at the forest
  perimeter (in connection with the recent string of murders in Raccoon City),
  local firefighters were unable to salvage any part of the estate's grounds.
  After a three-
  
  
  hour battle against the raging fire, the thirty one year old mansion and
  adjacent servant's quarters were deemed a complete loss.
  
  
  Built by Lord Oswell Spencer, European aristocrat and one of the founders of
  the worldwide pharmaceutical com-
  
  
  pany, Umbrella, Inc., the estate was designed by award-
  
  
  winning architect George Trevor as a guest hous