Close call, but no injuries in two-alarm fire in Somerville
SOMERVILLE — One resident had a close call, but no one was hurt in a two-alarm fire that ripped through a three-unit home on Mount Vernon Street about 11 this morning.
The fire consumed the rear of the home at 81 Mount Vernon in a blaze powerful enough to melt the siding from three neighboring homes.
A first-floor resident of the charred house, who gave his name only as Ryan, said he woke up to flames lapping at a kitchen window.
“I’m chillin’, it’s roasty toasty, I open my door, and it’s [expletive] raging,’’ said Ryan, who fled with only his cellphone, pants and shoes.
Ryan said he doused his kitchen window with the sink’s spray nozzle, but the heated pane exploded, letting in plumes of thick smoke.
“After it exploded, that was my cue,’’ he said. “Get out or be dead.’’
No one else was home, according to one Somerville fire official. Companies from Boston and Cambridge joined in the response to the second alarm.
Margie Gaudet, who lives nearby, said she thought the burning smell was from someone cooking in her building until she spotted the flames from across the street.
“Then I saw billows and billows of smoke,’’ Gaudet said. “The whole top [of the building] was just fire. It was really scary.’’
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