BEVERLY — One person was taken to the hospital with minor injuries following a three-alarm fire at a single-family home in Beverly early Monday morning.
At 4:41 a.m. on Monday, the Beverly Fire Department responded to a possible basement fire at a 2½ story house at 18 Sturtevant St., with heavy smoke visible upon arrival.
The building used older “balloon-frame” construction, meaning that the fire, which began in the basement, was able to travel up the walls uninterrupted from the basement to the upper floors, fire officials said.
“Basically, all of the exterior walls in the building are like mini-chimneys, where a fire that starts in the basement can run right up the walls,” said Deputy Fire Chief Jeff Sirois. “At one point, we had a fire on all three floors on the ceilings. So it was very extensive, we had multiple companies working on all three floors at various times trying to chase the fire through the building.”
The fire in the basement was able to be knocked down after about 45 minutes, with the extending fires through the first and second floor taking another hour to fully extinguish, according to Sirois.
The damage to the home was significant enough that the residents were temporarily displaced.
The cause of the fire is still under investigation by Beverly’s Fire Investigation Unit.