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Resident rescued from three-alarm fire in Dorchester

E-mail|Link|Comments () June 19, 2010 06:39 PM

Jack Nicas/Globe Correspondent

A firefighter helped the man down the ladder.

By Jack Nicas, Globe Correspondent, and Kathy McCabe, Globe Staff

A shirtless man leaned out of a third-floor window with black smoke billowing out behind him this morning as a three-alarm fire fire raced through a Dorchester home. Firefighters extended a ladder and, with their help, the man climbed down.

Shaky, coughing, and gasping for air, his torso covered with the soot, the man was placed on a stretcher with an oxygen mask. He was taken to the hospital for treatment of burns and smoke inhalation injuries.

Another three firefighters went to the building's front door with an axe and forced their way in as smoke and fire rose into the air at 22 Speedwell St.

A lit cigarette tossed on a second-floor porch of the group home for men is believed to have sparked the blaze that left nine residents homeless, the property owner said.

"It appears to be smoking-related," Bill Sprague, chief executive of Bay Cove Human Services, the nonprofit that owns the group home, said during a telephone interview after touring the home in the late afternoon.

He said smoking was allowed on the porches, but not in residents' rooms.

The rescued man, who was not identified, is believed to have discarded smoking materials on the second-floor porch in the rear of the building, Sprague said.

"That seems to be the assumption they're working under," Sprague said.

Steve MacDonald, spokesman for the Boston Fire Department, said investigators plan to interview residents before making a final determination about the cause. "They do know it started on the second-floor porch," he said.

Boston fire received multiple calls reporting a fire in the building at 11:21 a.m., District Fire Chief Robert Dowling said at the scene. The fire quickly spread to the two-family home next door, at 16-18 Speedwell St., damaging the roof, Dowling said. Intense heat from the fire also melted the plastic siding off a home at 15 Stonehurst St., located behind the group home.

The extent of damage to those properties was not clear today. A Boston firefighter also received a hand injury during the fire and was taken to a hospital, Dowling said.

"Fortunately, it wasn't a nighttime fire, when people would have been sleeping," Dowling said during a press briefing at the scene.

The three-story home at 22 Speedwelll sustained heavy damage to the second and third floors, Sprague said.

He said he does not believe the building had sprinklers, but it did have smoke alarms that sounded. Boston fire officials had been to the house on Friday to check to inspect the alarms, he said.

He said insurance adjusters will have to visit the site before an estimate of damages will be known. It will likely be several months before the home is occupied, he said.

All nine residents have been placed in other group homes run by Bay Cove, he said.

"We're fortunate that we have other places," he said. "We have room for overflow."