MEXICO – Five people were left homeless Monday night after fire ravaged their apartment building on Middle Avenue. No one was injured.
Early this morning, firefighters from several River Valley towns were still battling the blaze in the three-story building.
A family of four – two young adults and two young children – and another tenant at 25 Middle Ave. were displaced. According to unconfirmed reports, children playing with a candle in a second-floor apartment may have started the fire.
Jamie Corriveau, who lives across the street at 24 Middle Ave., said he was just getting ready for bed when he heard fire sirens unusually close. He said he looked outside just as one arrived and saw fire coming from the four-apartment building.
“There was one family living on top where the fire started,” he said, watching masked firefighters equipped with air packs waiting to enter the front door while others hosed down one side.
“Children got hold of a candle and by the time their parents realized it, it was too late,” Corriveau said, relating what he said one of the tenants told him.
“The father said that if the smoke detectors hadn’t have gone off, he wouldn’t have noticed it,” he said.
A Med-Care Ambulance crewman, who was monitoring the health of firefighters, said the parents were on the third floor, heard the smoke detector, came down to investigate and found the living room engulfed.
Corriveau said the family roused the first-floor tenant and got him out, along with his dog.
At first, it looked like firefighters would save the building. A Mexico firefighter high on an aerial ladder, sawed two holes in the metal roofing.
The deafening roar ripped through the neighborhood, which was rapidly filling up with smoke.
By 10:10 p.m., fire flared out through the side of the second-floor apartment as a Central Maine Power crewman was up a utility pole cutting power to the building.
Fifteen minutes later, a jet of flames shot high into the sky out the vented roof as the fire raged. By 10:40 p.m., fire broke through the roof, melting the metal. Firefighters high on the ladder and on a Rumford pumper, hit it with high-pressure hoses.
Charred and smoking siding peeled off, dropping to the snow-covered ground.
Ten minutes later, a large section of the roof was gone, and the battle to control the inferno continued.
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