LOWELL, MASS. (WHDH) - One person has died and three others are hospitalized with serious injuries after a raging, three-alarm blaze tore through a multi-family home in Lowell early Wednesday morning.
The fire broke out on Westford Street around 3:30 a.m., collapsing the roof of the house onto a car below as flames spread to two adjacent structures.
The Middlesex County District Attorney confirmed that a 77-year-old man perished in the fire, while two women and one man were flown to Boston hospitals with serious injuries.
An officer who was one of the first to arrive at the scene said he could hear screaming coming from the second floor of the building. He crawled toward the noise despite the intense heat and suffocating smoke and was able to escort a man woman and their child to safety, officials said.
Two more officers noticed a woman holding a baby standing on a second-floor balcony and they told her to drop the baby down to them before jumping herself. Both mother and child were said to be unhurt.
Daphne Lopez, who lives in the multi-family home, says her grandmother initially tried to put out the flames but the smoke became too much to handle.
“Her first advice was to go and throw water but I told her, ‘It’s too late. It’s too late.’ She stayed back there trying to open the door, trying to see if the smoke would go away but by the time I went back there, I couldn’t even see her in the smoke, like it was terrible inside, so I know for a fact that this was meant to happen for us to leave and get out safely,” she said.
Lopez also explained that she helped her grandmother and several others get out of the house.
“I saw Lowell police officers running around banging on windows with flashlights,” neighbor John Ryder added. “They dropped a couple of kids from the back.”
Firefighters also rescued a dog from the charred building.
The Salvation Army Lowell Emergency Disaster Services says it is coordinating with the American Red Cross and the Lowell Fire Department to assist the more than 25 residents who were displaced.
The scene remained sealed off for hours after the flames were extinguished as firefighters tried to salvage belongings from the gutted home, which will ultimately have to be torn down.
The fire is being jointly investigated by the Lowell fire and police departments, and state police assigned to both the Office of the State Fire Marshal and the Office of the Middlesex District Attorney.
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