Two houses blocks away from each other burst into flames in Grosse Pointe Shores on Saturday morning, causing one house's roof to collapse and forcing several fire departments to team up and battle the separate blazes.
A malfunctioning fire hydrant in front of the burning home on Roslyn Road left firefighters scrambling Saturday at about 6 a.m., said Lt. Ken Werenski of Grosse Pointe Shores Fire Department.
"The hydrant blew 10 minutes after we began working," Werenski said. "We had to quickly rethink our strategy. We couldn't work internally, so we focused on fighting the fire externally and were gradually able to extinguish it."
The fire began in the chimney and quickly spread throughout the house, destroying the second floor and collapsing the roof. The home will be demolished in the coming days, Werenski said.
The two occupants in the home woke up to the fire alarm and quickly evacuated. No one was injured, first responders said.
As firefighters responded to that fire, another fire was reported minutes away on Greenbriar Street. The cause of the fire is under investigation but appears to be an electrical fire, said Werenski. No one was hurt there either.
Fire departments from several surrounding communities, including Detroit, were dispatched to Grosse Pointe Shores on Saturday morning to fight the concurrent fires.
These appear to be the second and third fires in the Grosse Pointe area in the past month. A Grosse Pointe Farms house fire that began in the kitchen left two young brothers dead in late October.
In that situation, neighbors heard the boys, 9 and 11, screaming for help from the second story of the home but were unsuccessful in their attempts to enter the home, as the first floor was fully engulfed in flames.
Karen Pheiffer, a Grosse Pointe Shores resident of over 60 years, called the recent fires "alarming" and "scary."
"I don't remember this many fires happening so close to one another," she said. "We'll be taking extra precautions to try to prevent something like this from happening."
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