Saugus firefighters receive some unlikely help from broken fish tank

SAUGUS – Firefighters got a little help Wednesday when a fish tank doused a fire for them.Fire Chief James Blanchard said firefighters responded to a call regarding smoke alarms going off at Beachview Avenue home and found a home filled with heavy smoke.According to Blanchard, firefighters found a large fish tank inside.”The motor on the fish tank had overheated and caught fire,” Blanchard said. “It had caught the wall, the floor and the rug on fire too.”But as the fire burned, it heated up the glass in the large fish tank, eventually causing the tank to break.”And then what happened,” Blanchard asked. “The water from the tank put the fire out.”Blanchard said in his lengthy career as a firefighter he has seen joints melt on pipes leading to water spraying out and containing a fire in a certain area.”But I’ve never seen a fish tank put out a fire.”We did have some casualties,” he added. “It was good for the people that owned the house because it saved them from what could have been an awful fire. It was bad for the fish, though.”