Man missing in apartment fire

One man is unaccounted for after a fire tore through the apartment house where he lived.

http://sentinelsource.com/articles/2010/01/16/news/local/free/doc4b5292fb0df47151751304.txt

Man missing after apartment fire in Springfield, Vt.

Updated Jan 16, 11:30 p.m.
By SARAH PALERMO
Keene Sentinel
Published: Saturday, January 16, 2010

SPRINGFIELD, Vt. — One man is unaccounted for after a fire tore through the apartment building where he lived.

The 2-story building at 17 Pearl St. in Springfield was almost fully involved in flames when firefighters arrived just after 5 p.m. Saturday, said Springfield Fire Chief Russell Thompson.

Thompson would not identify the missing person, or confirm if the man was in the building when the fire broke out.

The first official on the scene “declared it was a defensive fire — that means basically we were not going to commit any persons to going inside the building because of the safety of the building and the volume of the fire.”

Several other residents of the building, which contained two apartments housing several people, escaped unharmed, though one woman was taken to Springfield Hospital as a precaution, Thompson said.

The building had working smoke detectors, but Thompson did not know if that’s what alerted some of the residents to the fire, he said.

The Red Cross is helping some of the residents, and others are staying with family in the area, he said.

The fire is under investigation by the Springfield police, Vermont State Police and the Vermont Division of Public Safety.

Two nearby houses and two vehicles were damaged by the heat from the fire, Thompson said.

“For the fire to move that quickly, in such an occupied area, that’s atypical,” he said.

The Charlestown and Chester, Vt., fire departments assisted at the scene, and the Bellows Falls Fire Department assisted with coverage for the Springfield station.