GRAFTON — Two Upper Valley homes were destroyed by recent fires, leaving three people injured, including one with severe burns.

Fire and ambulance crews responded to Grafton-Enfield town line near Spectacle Pond Friday morning for a medical emergency and a structure fire, Grafton Fire Chief Alan Gove said by phone Monday.

Gary Herschel had escaped his burning home at 213 Spectacle Pond Road in Grafton and traveled to a neighbor’s house, just across the town line in Enfield, for help, Gove said.

“The call came in as a structure fire with entrapment,” Gove said, because Herschel believed that his mother-in-law was still inside the house.

When fire crews arrived at Herschel’s house, they found his mother-in-law safely outside the home. She was transported by Canaan Ambulance to Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center, or DHMC, where she was treated and released on Saturday, Gove said.

Herschel was transported by Lebanon ambulance to DHMC and then flown to a Boston hospital, where he remained in critical condition Monday.

Gail Herschel, Gary’s wife, was not home at the time of the fire.

The Herschels’ pets, four dogs and one cat, perished in the fire.

The Herschels are former American Kennel Club breeders and trainers of English Springer Spaniel dogs. Now retired, they operated Northwinds Kennel on their 167-acre Grafton property, providing boarding services, their neighbor and Enfield Selectboard member Katherine Plumley Stewart said.

The fire was “fully involved” when crews arrived, Gove said. He called for a second alarm right away because “I knew we would need a lot of manpower.”

“It had a good head start,” he said of the fire.

Fire crews shuttled water from Spectacle Pond and were able to contain the fire within about an hour, Gove said.

“We’re treating it as accidental from the woodstove,” he said of the possible cause of the fire, which is under investigation by the state fire marshal and state police.

Stewart created a GoFundMe campaign to raise money for the Herschel family. As of Monday afternoon, the effort has raised more than $30,000 from 214 donors, according to the fund site.

The GoFundMe page states that Herschel suffered burns over an estimated 20-30% of his body and that he was placed in a medically induced coma.

In a Sunday update to the page, Stewart wrote that Herschel would undergo skin graft surgery this week and that “he is not expected to be fully lucid at any time soon given the nature of his fire injuries and medications used to control swelling, infection, and, of course, pain.”

Neighbors have offered help the family with housing, both in Grafton and in Boston during Herschel’s hospital stay. “We have amazing neighbors,” Stewart said.

The mutual aid response also included firefighting crews from the New Hampshire towns of Canaan, Grafton, Enfield, Danbury, Bristol, Alexandria, Springfield, Lebanon, Wilmot and New London. Andover’s crew provided coverage for Grafton’s fire station during the response, Gove said.

On Sunday afternoon, a fire destroyed a mobile home at 5790 Route 113 in Thetford Center and resulted in a minor injury to an occupant.

Thetford’s volunteer fire department responded at approximately 3:40 p.m. to a report of a structure fire, according to a statement released by Thetford Fire Chief Chad Whitcomb Sunday evening.

Two residents and several pets got out of the home safely before the fire department arrived. Firefighters brought the blaze under control by about 5 p.m.. the announcement said.

The cause of the fire is unknown and is being investigated, Whitcomb wrote.

Thetford’s fire department was assisted by crews from Bradford, Vt.; Hanover, Lyme, Orford, Strafford, Vershire and West Fairlee.

Christina Dolan can be reached at cdolan@ vnews.com or 603-727-3208.