LYNN — A large crowd gathered behind police tape on Monday night watching as a three-alarm fire ripped through a Congress Street apartment building.
Lynn firefighters responded shortly after 8 p.m. and found heavy flames showing outside — the call initially came in for 35 Congress St., but the blaze was really engulfing the house to the left at 39 Congress St., according to Lynn Fire Capt. Joseph Zukas.
Zukas said there were no injuries to residents of the six-unit building or to firefighters, but there was severe damage to the building.
Firefighters were able to extinguish the blaze by midnight, but were planning to stay on scene all night to investigate and as they were still working to put out hot spots. It wasn’t clear if the structure would be a total loss. The fire went through the roof of the building, but there was no collapse in the structure, Zukas said.
Zukas said there appeared to be at least eight to 10 people who lived in the building and Red Cross would be contacted to help assist with placing the residents.
He said most of the people were outside the home when firefighters arrived — upon arrival, crews thought one person may have still been inside, but that resident was accounted for.
Zukas said fireworks are being looked at as possibly leading to the fire — there was an unsubstantiated rumor about fireworks.
Joann Joyce, who lives down the street from the fire, said there’s always firecrackers on the street, especially with it being so close to the 4th of July. She said she was coming home from Stop & Shop and could see the smoke.
What hindered firefighters was a problem with fire hydrants, which delayed crews a bit from working to extinguish the flames, Zukas said.
Zukas said crews initially attacked the fire from inside, which is typically the game plan. He said firefighters always try to do an aggressive attack inside, which is more dangerous, but it’s quicker “and the quicker we get the fire out, the quicker everybody’s safe.
“The original crews made an aggressive attack on it and there was a problem with the hydrants so there was a water pressure problem, so they had to back off,” he said.
With hydrants nearby not working, crews had to grab hydrants farther away, which made the work more labor intensive. Each fire engine has 750 gallons of water, he said, but it has to be hooked up to a hydrant to get more water pressure.
“When the water pressure dies down, the guys have to back out for their safety and they have to get the water from farther away, so it takes time and then they have to make another attack on it,” he said. “They must have, at one point, pulled everybody out because the fire was getting ahead of them.”
The origin and cause of the fire was unclear as crews battled the fire throughout Monday night. Zukas said the fire appeared to be contained to the one building and hadn’t spread to other structures, but there was some heat damage that melted some of the siding on the house next door, 35 Congress St.
But he said conditions were bad. He said it was a very unusual fire because heavy and thick smoke was banking down on the neighborhood and staying to the ground, whereas usually smoke goes up.
“The smoke condition was so bad that I couldn’t see the hand in front of my face as we were walking almost a block away,” Zukas said.
Electricity had to be cut in the area for the safety of the fire department, leaving about 12 to 14 homes in the dark, Zukas said.
Responding to the scene was crews and apparatus from the entire Lynn Fire Department, along with crews from Revere, Swampscott, Malden, Saugus and Salem.
