Beverly Fire: Residents Escaped Park Street Blaze Unharmed

BEVERLY, MA – The fire that engulfed a Park Street home this week was likely accidental, according to the preliminary cause. The home is "completely uninhabitable."

Residents all over the city could smell the smoke from 86 Park St. late Monday night. Beverly Fire Captain Paul Rideout said today that two people were inside the house when the fire started, but both escaped safely with no injuries.

The call for the two-alarm fire came in at around 9:10 p.m., Rideout said. The flames took over each floor within the course of an hour, traveling through the balloon-frame housing of the single family home.

According to the Beverly Fire Department Facebook page, while the cause of the fire is still unknown, it appeared to have started on the porch.

Heavy fire was showing when crews arrived at the front of the building, which is close to the Federal Street intersection.

"Basically it went from the cellar and got inside the walls and went right into that attic," said Rideout

Two firefighters suffered minor injuries, and were treated at the scene and remained on duty. Firefighters from Beverly, Manchester, Wenham, Salem, and Danvers responded to the fire. Hamilton, Peabody, and Topsfield Fire Departments covered the Beverly stations.

Rideout said most of the heavy fire was out roughly one hour after it started, but crews remained on scene chasing hot spots as they broke out.

"It's unihabitable, completely," Rideout said. "We're estimated the lost total is minimum $150,000." The fire was investigated by members of the Beverly Fire Investigation unit and a person from the state Fire Marshal's office.

Here are some tweets from the scene:

#Breaking Fire Crews are responding to a possible #Fire in #Beverly, updates to follow #7News pic.twitter.com/PfGDQ2bCb0
— WHDH Assignment Desk (@deskon7) December" class="redactor-linkify-object">https://twitter.com/deskon7/st... 6, 2016