UPDATE: 3-Alarm Fire Displaces Multiple Families

Multiple families were evacuated and placed in emergency housing on Wednesday night after their apartment building at 77-79 Washington Street caught fire.  Though Bloomfield Fire Chief Joseph McCarthy said no one was severely injured, the 3-alarm blaze caused extensive property damage.  The cause of the fire is unknown at this time. 

“At least two, and up to four families will be displaced tonight,” said McCarthy at the scene.  “They may seek emergency relocation from the Red Cross. They’re with the police now.”

No one was taken to the hospital as a result of the blaze, which began at around 9:30 p.m. on the top floor of the building. Belleville firefighters assisted in the effort.

“There were no civilian injuries but a couple of firefighters were banged up a little,” McCarthy said.  “We don’t have any information about the type and cause of the fire.  The inspectors haven’t even gotten here yet.”

Firefighters gathered on Washington Street at around 11:00 last night after fighting the blaze in the cockloft of the building, an open space on the top floor.  “We had to cut holes in the ceiling of the top floor,” they said.  

“I saw smoke twenty feet high,” said Joe Huang, who was working at his family’s restaurant, Tao Tuen Chuen, when the fire broke out.  “The firefighters got here fast.”

“It was scary,” recalled a woman sitting among her neighbors outside Roxy Florist on the corner of Bloomfield Avenue and Washington Street.  She said she had been waiting for over an hour for firefighters to give her the go-ahead to return to her home.  “They came out with hatchets.  They were all screaming into their radios.  We got out.”

UPDATE:  Bloomfield Fire Chief Joseph McCarthy told Patch on Thursday that the cause of the fire was an unattended candle in the top floor of the residence.

"The families were relocated to emergency shelter by the Red Cross," he said.