Townhouse fire displaces families, damages 7 homes By JANE MCHUGH Staff Writer
Families have been substantially inconvenienced, and in at least one case displaced, by a two-alarm blaze that damaged a row of seven townhouses in Belair Town II off Race Track Road.
The fire started in the basement of 13005 Minetta Lane Monday morning, said Mark Brady, spokesman for the Prince George's County Fire Department. The first alarm sounded at 11:30 a.m. with heavy smoke and flames showing; a second alarm brought 60 firefighters, medics and civilian personnel to the scene. It took a half-hour to extinguish the blaze in cold, wet weather brought by a prolonged storm that swept the region dumping 4 inches of rain.
The Blade-News was unable to reach the family who lived in the townhouse where the fire started but learned they're being helped by the fire department's Citizen Services Unit and the local Red Cross.
Next-door neighbor Joanne Russell, a retired federal employee whose townhouse was partially damaged by smoke and water, said the help she's received from local residents has been heart-warming. "All the neighbors pitched in, they couldn't have done more," she marveled Tuesday, surveying her furniture; neighbors had put protective plastic covers on it.
A truck and a van from a textile restoration company came to inspect Russell's townhouse. The home smelled heavily of smoke throughout and had holes in the walls and ceilings where firefighters worked to stop the blaze from spreading.
Russell's daughter, Kathy Cavanaugh, pointed to a hole in the wall of an upstairs bedroom where cinder block showed through. "This cinder block is the fire wall and as you can see, is the reason the fire didn't spread," Cavanaugh said.
There was another hole in the bathroom ceiling and underneath it, pieces of molding and Fiberglass that had fallen from the hole. There was a big, greasy water puddle in the kitchen, water damage in a closet where clothes had been carefully boxed and labeled, and the light beige carpet on the first floor was dark brown. Firefighters' dirty hand prints went up and down the stair wall connecting the first and second floors. A sliding glass door in the basement had been smashed by firefighters.
But Russell's house was nothing compared to the one next door where the fire erupted. It was completely burned out to the tune of what fire spokesman Brady estimated at $350,000.
Brady said the cause hasn't been determined but thinks the fire had been smouldering in the basement for "a period of time before anyone noticed it."
Russell wasn't home when the fire started but her two dogs were. She said someone kicked in her locked front door and rescued the pets, who Tuesday, a sunny spring day, were sitting on the front lawn to get away from the overwhelming odor of heavy smoke.
A reporter found a charred penny near the fire that weighed a trifle of a regular penny and had pieces of its edge broken off; its head and tail were so marred by fire meltdown, you couldn't tell it was actually a penny unless you compared it to a penny from your purse or pocket. "Those kind of fires can burn anywhere between 750 degrees to 1,500 degrees," Brady said.
