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Friday, December 8, 2006
By John R. Ellement and Brian Ballou, Globe Staff, and Andrew Ryan, Globe Correspondent
Firefighters are battling an electrical fire at an office building in Cambridge where up to 30 people had to be rescued from a roof.
The fire is at 1 Broadway, an office building at the intersection of Main Street near the Longfellow Bridge, which has been closed.
Cambridge police spokesman Frank Pasquarello said there may have been an explosion in the building and that 20 to 25 people were being treated for smoke inhalation.
"There are no fatalities," Pasquarello said.
Just after 11 a.m., occupants reported hearing a faint, low rumble, according to Aaron Read, 30, who was at work on the third floor.
"Immediately the lights started flickering and the electricity went weird," Read said.
Fire alarms sounded and people began evacuating the 17-story building.
"There was a hell of a lot of smoke in emergency stairwells," said Read.
The smoke was white and it smelled as if it was from an electrical fire, Read said.
On the ninth floor, employees at the Syska Hennessy Group engineering and consulting firm started to evacuate. When the group made it as far as about the sixth floor, the smoke got so thick they could only see a few inches in front of their faces, employees said.
The employees said they then broke the windows and were able to crawl out onto the roof of an adjacent parking garage, where they were able to make their way down to the ground.
Katika Janes said was she working at an engineering firm on the fifth floor when an announcement over the public address system told people to evacuate because there was an electrical fire in the basement.
Janes headed for the emergency stairwell where she said she and about 75 other people had to push through smoke and flames to get outside.
"It was scary," Janes said. "Very scary."
The MBTA has shut down the Red Line between Park Street and Central Square because of the fire. Passengers are being bused between the two stations.
Posted by the Boston Globe City & Region Desk at 11:29 AM
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