LAWRENCE, MASS. (WHDH) - The home of a Lawrence police officer was destroyed in a gas fire Thursday — one of dozens that broke out almost simultaneously in the Merrimack Valley — as he was working alongside scores of his colleagues in an effort to help impacted community members.
As flames shot out of the front windows of Officer Ivan Soto’s home on Jefferson Street in Lawrence, nearby residents watched helplessly as the structure was consumed. With emergency crews overwhelmed by other calls, there was nobody to stop the fire from spreading.
Soto is now speaking out about his oldest daughter, who was at home when their house exploded and caught fire.
“She felt the first explosion in the house and she got out,” Soto said. “When I saw her, I was really happy. I said, ‘Thank God’ and told everyone to make sure you stay out of your house.”
Just seconds earlier, Soto and the Lawrence Police Department were trying to save the young man killed in his car from another house explosion.
“And then I just thought about my daughter being at home,” Soto said. “I gave her a call and said, ‘I don’t know what’s going on, but get out of the house.’ About a few minutes later I found out that my house was on fire also.”
Soto and another officer rushed over to his home to find it engulfed in flames. It was too late to save anything.
“Once I knew she was safe and my other daughter was safe, I just asked for a ride back to my cruiser and continued doing what I was doing,” Soto said.
He immediately went back to work, making sure his neighbors and others were safe as well.
“The house is material that can come back,” Soto said. “Yeah, there’s a lot of memories in there, but I just wanted to make sure my family was OK and everyone else’s family was OK. There was nothing else that was on my mind.”
Their home is a total loss, but Soto’s family was safe and his oldest daughter who survived the first explosion got out of the house just in time.
“She was traumatized when I got there,” Soto said. “But I told her everything was going to be fine and dad had to get back out there and make sure no one else was going to get hurt.”
By the time the first engine from arrived, the house was fully engulfed in flames.
“It went on for a while,” neighbor Adolpho Acevedo said. “We could see the plume of smoke from my house a couple blocks away.”
When the first fire crews — a team from Lowell — finally hit the home with water, it was already a total loss.
Fire officials said the two people who were home at the time the fire broke out managed to escape uninjured.
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