March 07--An early-morning fire in Haverhill that killed one and injured two others awoke a neighbor with "horrible screaming" followed by a cannon-like explosion that engulfed the bottom floor of the nearby triple-decker with such intense heat, she could feel it in her bedroom 30 feet away.
"The whole side of the house was in flames," said Marcia Stanley, who lives next to the Washington Street building where authorities say an elderly woman was killed and a man and a woman were seriously injured. Stanley said an elderly woman on oxygen was among those who lived in the first-floor apartment where the fire started.
"I was so scared," Stanley said. "I thought our house was on fire because of that heat."
Residents on the second and third floors escaped uninjured, including a family of four with two small children, according to a spokeswoman with the Red Cross.
Stanley said just after midnight, she heard what sounded like "a bomb go off, or like a cannon," and as she and her two daughters fled their home, an electrical box on the side of the home also blew.
"It was really quite frightening," she said.
State Fire Marshal Steve Coan said the cause of the blaze remains under investigation. A spokeswoman for the Essex County district attorney's office, which is also probing the fire, said one injured resident was taken to Massachusetts General Hospital and the other was taken to Lawrence Memorial Hospital.
Copyright 2012 - Boston Herald
