Deputy Fire Chief Mark Devine supervises as firefighters bring a hose into a Franklin Street house which was damaged by a fire yesterday afternoon. (Photo by Carl E. Hartdegen)
WESTFIELD – Working smoke detectors at a multi-family house on Franklin Street alerted residents promptly of a fire in the building and allowed firefighters to respond quickly to extinguish the fire without injury.
Multiple callers alerted emergency dispatchers of the fire at 3:04 p.m. yesterday and firefighters responded to 89 Franklin Street where a fire was found in a first floor bedroom.
Deputy Fire Chief Patrick Egloff reports that an unattended candle somehow ignited the items on top of a desk and those flames reached a pull-down window shade which caught fire and not only spread the fire to the wall but also allowed the fire to spread to the floor when pieces of the burning window shade fell.
“Compared to the fires we’ve had in recent weeks, it wasn’t a big fire”, Egloff said, “but it could have been” if it had not been noticed promptly.
Police report that a resident said that he had used a garden hose in an attempt to put out the fire but Egloff said that it had spread and firefighters had to pull down parts of the walls and ceiling to extinguish it.
He said that the fire damage was limited to one part of one room but the electrical supply to the building was interrupted as a precaution and there was smoke damage throughout the house.
A city firefighter points out an area of interest to Deputy Fire Chief Patrick Egloff, the department’s fire prevention officer, at the scene of a Franklin Street fire yesterday afternoon. (Photo by Carl E. Hartdegen)
Firefighters report that Red Cross officials were notified and provided assistance to the tenants displaced by the fire.
Dawn Leaks of the Pioneer Valley chapter of the American Red Cross reports that tenants living in four of the building’s five apartment units were able to return to their homes before nightfall but the Red Cross assisted one adult and one child who were displaced by the fire.
Officer Kerry Paton reports that, when police arrived, a tenant said that his older “poodle type” dog was still inside the house.
However, when the responding firefighters opened up the building to vent the smoke inside, the dog ran out and was reunited with its owner.
Paton reports that soot on the dog’s white coat was the only apparent result of the dog’s experience in the fire.
