FITCHBURG — Firefighters rushed to a house on Summer Street on Wednesday afternoon for a report of smoke coming from a residence to put out a fire that seemed to start on the second-floor porch.
First arriving crews reported smoke and heavy fire on a porch on the side of the building. Multiple attack lines were deployed, a water supply established, and roof access was gained via an aerial ladder truck. Crews quickly knocked down the fire before conducting overhaul to check for any extension of the fire within the house.
The fire was quickly put out and no one was injured.
No one was home in the second-floor apartment where the fire started, according to Deputy Fire Chief Patrick Roy, but “one of the people that live there, on the third floor, called it in, and the first-floor tenant was sleeping, smelled smoke and woke up,” and also called it in, Roy said.
The quick action of the neighbors made all the difference in this case, Roy said.
“Give that a few more minutes,” and the whole house would have been on fire, Roy said. “Absolutely. … If someone didn’t call in right away it could have been gone.”
Roy said there actually was some vinyl on the roof that melted, and he said if that hadn’t been there, the rest of the house could have gone up in flames. “That probably bought us a few minutes.”
But he noted that it was a quick response by the firefighters, who were able to put it out in short order, that was key. Group 4 had been dispatched to put out the fire.
“The guys did a great job. They knocked it down pretty quick,” Roy said.
The cause of the fire is still under investigation.
While Roy acknowledged that there were a few fires earlier this year that were apparent cases of arson, but there was no indication of that in this case that could be determined yet.
“We try not to speculate,” Roy said, adding that it could have been anything from discarded smoking materials, to a host of other causes, but he did say there was no cooking grill where the fire started.
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