BOSTON (CBS) – A man died in a house fire in Brighton early Monday morning. The Suffolk County District Attorney identified the victim as 23-year-old Zach Thompson from Oxford, Connecticut.
A fire broke out shortly after midnight in a multi-family home on Perthshire Road.
Flames erupt from a house in Brighton. Someone died in the fire. (WBZ-TV)
When the first firefighters arrived, they found a woman trapped on the roof of the second floor after she climbed out of a window on the third floor.
“My second-floor bedroom window was open so I could hear screaming, which knocked me out,” said neighbor Donna Maxisak. She was screaming for help, and she was screaming for her boyfriend. They tried to go up the big staircase there, but the fire spread very quickly. It started in the back of the house. A firefighter grabbed a ladder and put it opposite the house and lowered it that way.”
A mobile phone video showed flames rising from the second floor to the third floor.
The harsh conditions made any kind of rescue very difficult. Intense fire. The third floor was ready to flash when they went up there. “These were very challenging conditions,” said Jack Dempsey, Boston Fire Commissioner.
A neighbor just shared this video showing a file Tweet embed A fireman climbs a ladder to the roof of this # Brighton A house where a woman was trapped/rescued overnight. We were told she climbed out of a third floor window. Boston Fire confirms one death Tweet embed pic.twitter.com/onLtU84GN1
– Nick Giovanni (@NickGNews) September 6, 2021
Once the firefighters made their way home, they found the victim on the third floor who was pronounced dead at the scene.
A resident and two firefighters were taken to hospital.
Another neighbour, Fatim Kramer, caught the fire in a mobile phone video. “No words. I was shivering the whole time. It’s so heartbreaking,” she said.
“A group of young men and women had just moved in probably a week and a week and a half ago,” Kramer said.
The cause of the fire, which displaced nine people, is still under investigation.
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