3 firefighters injured battling suspicious Olneyville fires
7:35 AM Mon, Mar 09, 2009 | Permalink
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Get the 7 to 7 on your mobile at www.projo.com. Twitter: projo | RSS | Email alerts By Kate Bramson and Cynthia Needham PROVIDENCE, R.I. -- Two house fires last night that engulfed two vacant homes in Olneyville and injured three firefighters are suspicious and are under investigation, according to Deputy Assistant Fire Chief Daniel Crowley. Fire was reported at 43 Hyat St. and 47 Hyat St. at 9:30 p.m., Crowley said. Fire was more involved in the building at 43 Hyat St., on the corner of Hyat and Kossuth streets, Crowley said. One firefighter remains at Rhode Island Hospital this morning for cardiac-related care, Crowley said. He is expected to be released today. The other two firefighters fell through some stairs and were treated and released -- with contusions and sprains -- at Roger Williams Medical Center, Crowley said. Crowley said the approximately 50 firefighters who responded to the blazes "did a tremendous job holding [the fire] to those two houses." The volume of fire and its proximity to other houses in the area required the amount of firefighters -- about half of the on-duty firefighters in the city -- who responded, he said. The fires were near another vacant house and across the street from the William D'Abate Elementary School, at 60 Kossuth St., Crowley said. With two fires next door to each other, it would ordinarily appear that fire in one extended to the other home, Crowley said. Although that did happen, with the fire at 43 Hyat more heavily involved and extending to 47 Hyat St., Crowley said fire actually broke out on multiple floors of both buildings at approximately the same time. "They are definitely suspicious, and we expect incendiaries to be the causes," he said this morning. The original version of this posting was filed at 7:06 a.m. Neighbors said they watched one of the houses on Hyat St. go up in flames just after 9:30 p.m. Both homes are believed to have been vacant for several months. Crowley said no one was living in either home, and they were empty at the time of the fires. Tony Walker, 19, was walking to a nearby convenience store when he spotted the fire. He ran to the front door of the first house and banged loudly on the door to see if anyone was inside. That house, and the one next to it, appeared empty and the smoke was overwhelming, so Walker backed off and yelled to others on the street to call 911. Firefighters swarmed the scene. They were able to enter 47 Hyat St. and fight the fire from within the building, but at 43 Hyat St., they needed to knock the fire down from outside before they could enter the building, Crowley said. By 10:30 p.m. the fires in both structures were extinguished. After 11 p.m., firefighters were working to tear the charred roof off the first house. This morning, the city's fire prevention bureau and arson investigator continue to investigate the fires, Crowley said. Also last evening, around 5:30 p.m., firefighters extinguished a burning truck inside a truck-repair facility located at 90 Reservoir Ave., next to a rental storage facility, Crowley said. 
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