The Asssociated Press
BALTIMORE — Fire spread through adjacent rowhouses Monday, pumping out a plume of smoke that could be seen for miles.
An explosion was reported before the fire broke out, but details were sketchy, officials said.
“I heard a big bang and then the house shook,” neighbor Rachelle Harris told WMAR-TV.
Some 40 fire trucks and other equipment and more than 100 firefighters, paramedics and other personnel responded to the blaze in the northeastern part of Baltimore, according to Kevin Cartwright, a fire department spokesman.
One firefighter and a civilian suffered minor injuries.
Cartwright said officials were investigating the reports of an explosion, especially given “the magnitude and intensity of the fire.”
Television images showed that the roof of at least one of the buildings had collapsed.
The building where the fire started shortly after 3 p.m. is in a block of about a dozen buildings, some of them vacant.