LOWELL, MASS. (WHDH) - A child playing with a lighter accidentally set a couch on fire, prompting firefighters to save the life of a teenager trapped on the top floor of the burning home in Lowell on Thursday morning, investigators said.
Crews responding to a report of a fire at a home on Seventh Street around 8:45 a.m. spoke with panicked residents who said people were trapped inside.
“The challenge was right at the beginning when we had multiple people running around the building saying that people were trapped,” Lowell Deputy Fire Chief Bob Destrempe said.
One resident told 7NEWS that firefighters used a ladder to rescue her grandson from the top floor.
“My daughter was out here screaming and my grandson was up in the window,” the woman said. “They got him out and he’s at the hospital.”
The woman says she rushed out of work when she learned her home was on fire.
“By the time I got here, he was on a stretcher and they were taking him to the hospital,” she said of her grandson. “He seemed OK. A little smoke inhalation but he looked OK.”
The Red Cross is assisting those who were displaced by the blaze.
Fire investigators ruled the fire as accidental.
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