Lawrence home lost to fire complicated by wind, chill, fire chief says

Firefighters battled through icy and frigid conditions overnight after a three-family home in Lawrence raged to a three-alarm fire, displacing about 15 people.

The preliminary investigation shows the Saturday night fire started in the attic of the home, said Jake Wark, spokesman for the state Department of Fire Services, but the exact cause of the fire has not yet been determined.

Wark added that about 15 people were displaced by the blaze, but that number could be made up by both residents of the home and surrounding buildings. There were no reported injuries and the blaze was contained to the one home.

Lawrence Fire Chief Brian Moriarty said that he received a report of the fire on Tremont Street at roughly 10:30 p.m. and didn’t return home until roughly 5 Sunday morning. The lengthy firefighting operation saw support units from many surrounding communities and was made more difficult by cold, windy weather.

Windchill dipped area temperatures down to as low as 2 degrees just before 4 a.m., according to National Weather Service data from Lawrence Municipal Airport.

“The fire just had too much going for it,” Moriarty said. He added that the cold froze up emergency radios and that water from their hoses coated the structure in ice that “just built and built.”

Further complicating efforts, he said, were decorative tin panels on the home’s ceilings that were “a difficult pull.”

Three-alarm fires are not that unusual for Lawrence, Moriarty said. The old mill town is filled with old homes built with outdated construction methods and electrical wiring that wasn’t designed for today’s electrical needs.

“An old house wasn’t built for such things,” Moriarty said.

from Boston Herald https://ift.tt/6azUowS