Two-alarm kitchen blaze on Main St.
Published on November 26th, 2003
STONEHAM, MA - A two-alarm fire that started in the kitchen of a condo at the 159 Main Street Ponderosa complex kept the Stoneham Fire Department hopping on Monday afternoon.
According to Stoneham Fire Department sources, the fire was started in unit 38B when a Stoneham resident, Theodore Monteiro, was reportedly cooking on a frying pan with some brandy, and allegedly lost control of the pan when the alcohol ignited.
"It was a single apartment fire that started with cooking," said Stoneham Fire Capt. James Marshall. "I don't want to go into too much detail because it's still under investigation."
The fire spread to some nearby furniture in the dining room area of the residence, but Stoneham fire officials were able to contain the flames to the one unit, and there were no injuries that resulted from the minor blaze.
"The guys did an excellent job of keeping the fire to the fourth floor and making sure it didn't spread to other residences," said Stoneham Fire Lt. Marshall. "The guys were killing themselves to make sure everybody was out of the upper floors because the smoke was pretty bad on the upper floors. It makes it difficult when we've only got seven guys at the scene, and you've made sure first that the fire is knocked down at the main apartment."
"It was one of those situations where we were fortunate that it was in the middle of the day, and more people didn't need to be evacuated," added Stoneham Fire Captain Jim McLaughlin. "It could have been even worse."
Stoneham, Reading and Wakefield reported to the second alarm at 12:53 p.m. The Stoneham fire unit arrived with Ladder One and Engine One captained by Marshall.
According to Marshall, the out-of-town units arrived some five minutes later, and the Stoneham firefighters were a little overloaded with fighting the fire and escorting people out of the building.
"It definitely would have helped to have another engine in service," said Marshall. "It was definitely a problem that we didn't have enough men in a building that big. We had to split crews to search in the floors above and below the fourth floor."
According to Marshall, he and firefighter Chris Humber were the first two through the front door to meet the fire, and that Guy Cammarata and Mike O'Sullivan were following closely behind.
The local firefighters had to force open the doors at several apartments to make certain that no one was home, and had cleared the scene at 2:44 p.m.
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