By Marie Szaniszlo
Boston Herald
BROCKTON, Mass. — Fast-acting firefighters are being credited with helping rescue two people who were fast asleep when a fire tore through their Brockton home yesterday morning, authorities said.
No one was injured in the blaze, which broke out shortly before 8 a.m., in a 1 1/2-story wood-frame house on Howland Street. Only two of the six tenants were home at the time.
“The guys did a great job getting in there and making sure everyone got out safely,” fire Capt. Jeff Marchetti said. “They were able to avert a tragedy.”
When firefighters arrived on scene, officials say they found heavy smoke and flames shooting out of windows on the top floor. After forcing their way into the building, Marchetti said firefighters found two unoccupied rooms on the upper floor that were being consumed by flames.
As some firefighters cut a ventilation hole in the roof, others hosed down the house while a third group searching the building found a woman sleeping in a first-floor bedroom and located a man making his way upstairs from a basement room.
“They just tell me to get out,” said Garrio Jean Pierre, who was awakened by water pouring into the basement from the hoses. “I thank God. I could be dead now.”
It took 23 firefighters about 20 minutes to get the blaze under control, Marchetti said.
The fire appears to have started in a front bedroom on the top floor, he said, but the cause was still under investigation last night.
The owner of the building, who declined to comment, will have to bring the structure up to code before the house is habitable again, Marchetti said. The basement bedroom did not have a second means of egress, he said, and the smoke detectors in the home were not working.
Since last July, 41 people have died in Massachusetts house fires, and 25 percent of them could be attributed to either a lack of smoke detectors or ones that weren’t working properly, said Bob Geller, a Red Cross disaster action team supervisor.
John Wilcox contributed to this report.
___
(c)2016 the Boston Herald