New Bedford firefighters battle three-alarm fire on Clark Street

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By Brian Fraga

Firefighters this morning battled a three-alarm fire that destroyed the top floor of a triple decker at 98 Clark St.

The fire, which broke out just after 10:30 a.m., displaced residents on all three floors, including at least three people who were inside the tenement when the fire started. A man on the third floor escaped the building before firefighters arrived.

New Bedford Acting Fire Chief Paul Coderre, Jr., said firefighters escorted a woman to safety who had been in the second floor apartment. The woman, 33, suffered smoke inhalation and was taken to Rhode Island Hospital.

The woman’s live-in fiance, Robert Woodard, ran down the staircase to safety outside after firefighters helped her to get out. Woodard said he could barely see through the thick smoke in the stairwell.

“I just tried to get out of the house,” Woodard said, adding that he heard the building’s smoke alarms sounding before he opened the door and saw smoke in the hallway.

“It really got real then,” said Woodard, who told reporters on the scene that his fiance has asthma. He still expected her to make a full recovery.

“She’ll be alright,” Woodard said.

Firefighters appeared to have the blaze under control within 45 minutes of arriving on the scene. The first responding firefighters saw heavy smoke and large flames shooting from the building’s roof.

Coderre said the fire appeared to have started in the front third floor apartment, though he added that it was too early in the investigation to determine a cause of the fire. Coderre said he expected firefighters and investigators to remain on scene for several hours, putting out hotspots.

“Until we can knock it down to a sufficient level where we’re comfortable putting people back in and we can check for structural stability, or we re-enter the building, you will see us here outside,” Coderre said.

Neighbors said they heard the fire alarms just after 10:30 a.m. Most assumed they were false alarms until they started seeing smoke in the neighborhood. Tracy Furtado, a neighbor, said she heard someone yelling, “Fire, everybody get out!”

“People were screaming, ‘Get out, get out,’” said Furtado, who saw firefighters escort a woman from the building with no shoes on and having an obvious hard time breathing.

Benny Furtado, Jr., a neighbor who knows a female tenant in the fire-damaged third floor apartment, said she had just left for the store when the fire began. He called her to tell her that her apartment was on fire.

“She couldn’t believe it,” Furtado said. “She thought I was joking at first.”

New Bedford police officers evacuated at least two triple-deckers adjacent to the fire. Firefighters on scene doused those buildings with water to keep them from also catching fire. Coderre said firefighters from across the city responded, including some units that were taking part in a regular drill at New Bedford Regional Airport.

Meanwhile, firefighters on scene were also following up on reports of at least one cat inside the building during the fire.

“We’ll see. Cats are very resilient,” Coderre said. “We’ve had fires worse than this and we have been able to find the cats alive. They have a great way of escaping a fire when they want to.”

This story will be updated when more information becomes available.

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