By Dakota Antelman and Celeste Katz Marston — [email protected]
Families are spending the runup to the end of the year displaced from their apartments after Concord Fire Department personnel evacuated residents and doused flames at a multi-story Conant Street condominium complex Sunday.
According to a CFD accounting of the incident, many residents of 95 Conant Street had gotten out of the building by the time first responders arrived in response to an alarm at 8:12 a.m. — but about a dozen were still inside.
Firefighters went door to door to make sure all residents of the Concord Commons complex got out, physically relocating three who couldn’t leave on their own. No one was injured, according to CFD.
Crews found smoke on the first and second floor and located fire in the ceiling of an attached garage, quickly extinguishing the flames.
Firefighters also shut down all utilities to the scene, meaning residents are temporarily unable to return.
On Monday, Fire Chief Thomas Judge confirmed to The Concord Bridge that no apartment units were damaged. He said the fire was contained to the garage but caused “extensive” damage to gas supply lines, spurring the utility shutoff.
Jake Wark, a spokesperson for the state Department of Fire Services, said Monday afternoon that investigators from the Concord Fire Department and the state police traced the fire’s origin to an area above a drop ceiling in the garage.
Wark said officials “identified wiring that led to a heater mounted in the ceiling.” Investigators deemed the fire accidental and Wark said it was most likely the result of “some kind of electrical event in the area.”
‘We left in a rush’
Two security workers patrolled the parking lot on Monday while residents came and went at the building, which had yellow caution tape stretched across its entrances.
Oswald Johnston said he and his wife, who has mobility issues, were home Sunday morning when the fire started. When firefighters arrived, he said, they helped her down the stairs.
Johnston said he and his wife had booked two nights in a hotel after being told they would have to find somewhere else to stay.
He returned briefly to collect a bag of medications from his unit and said he is grateful the damage wasn’t worse. “It could have been extremely serious with gas,” he said.
Resident Chung Der spoke to The Bridge in the complex’s parking lot with a suitcase in one hand and a paper bag in the other. “We had to scramble,” he said, recalling efforts to find lodging after the fire.
Der said he hopes crews will make repairs quickly so residents can settle back into their homes, “but it seems like it is quite a sizable project.”
It wasn’t immediately clear when residents would be able to fully reoccupy the building. A man who identified himself as a representative of the property management company at the scene on Monday declined comment.
The fire departments of Acton, Bedford, Lexington, Lincoln, Maynard, Sudbury, and Weston provided mutual aid at the scene on Sunday, while Carlisle and Wayland covered fire stations and Concord police detoured traffic on Conant Street.
