A fire destroyed the 18th century home of Barry and Peg Cavanaugh in Bucks County, Pennsylvania.
Cavanaugh, a book dealer, collapsed on his front lawn as he watched his house and book collection burn to the ground. The historic Plumstead home was built around 1740 and housed Cavanaugh’s huge book collection.
The story in the Bucks County Courier Times notes that the 30,000 books were all rare books. Though that might be a bit of a stretch; I doubt there are many places on earth that house 30,000 truly rare books, for a book person this is still a tragedy of the highest order.
The town fire marshal, Scott Fleisher, said that “the thousands of books made it more difficult for firefighters to get the blaze under control.”
Neighbors rushed into the burning home to try and save some of the contents and had to be physically removed by the firefighters
Luckily, no one was hurt.