Loretto Ave. House Fire Causes Major Damage

Two women living on separate sides of a center-split Loretto Avenue home will be displaced indefinitely after the rear of the house they were renting caught fire Tuesday night, causing damage to both apartments.

“There’s enough damage that they’re going to be displaced for a while,” Battalion Fire Chief Kirk Wolthouse said. “The whole back wall is going to have to be ripped out and replaced.”

Authorities on the scene said one of the renters was in the house watching television and unaware that the back of the house was on fire until a neighbor knocked on the front door to alert her. The other renter was at work and arrived on the scene about a half-hour later.

Fire crews rushed to the scene of the working fire on the corner of Loretto and Lincoln avenues at 8:24 p.m. and had the main body of the blaze knocked down within 15 minutes, Wolthouse said. Firefighters then spent the next half-hour chasing small pockets of fire until all of it was extinguished.

Authorities couldn’t yet say how or where the fire actually began, but Wolthouse speculated it could have actually started behind the house and spread to the rear attic because a small shed and garbage area behind the home were also actively involved in the blaze.

The home’s rear exterior façade and attic suffered major damage as fire crews were forced to cut away part of the roof with saws and initially fight the fire from the outside.

“The fire was in the attic and we had a small access point,” Wolthouse explained. “So instead of risking anybody going into the attic, we attacked it from the outside first, knocked it down and then we stuck somebody into the attic once it was safe.”

While the rear of the house took serious fire damage, the front is fine, save for some minor smoke and water damage, Wolthouse said.

Police closed roads in the vicinity of the fire, primarily on and around Lincoln and Loretto avenues, until the fire scene was cleared.

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