3-Alarm Fire Destroys Lynn Apartments

LYNN (CBS) – A three-alarm fire gutted several apartments and damaged a restaurant in Lynn late Tuesday night.

Flames broke out in the three-story building on Chestnut Street around 11 p.m.

"It was obviously in the walls and the ceilings because it had complete control of the back wall and up into the cockloft in the attic when we got here," Lynn Fire Chief James McDonald told reporters.

Thirty-one people, 7 of them children, escaped safely. There were no injuries reported.

Bernadette Guzman said the downstairs hallway was on fire.

"I went upstairs to see my apartment. As soon as I went to the kitchen I smelled all that smoke and then I just ran down," she told WBZ-TV.

"We got everybody streaming out of the building. We took a couple of people out by ladders on the Union Street side. We got lines in place in the building for about 10-to-15 minutes. We had to get everybody out because of the bad conditions," McDonald said.

The chief said the late hours made it difficult to fight the fire.

"It was the time of day where everybody is in bed, just going to bed. Everybody's in the building. So our first concern was making sure everybody got out and conditions change very rapidly, so it didn't give us the opportunity to do a secondary search," he said.

It appears the fire started in the back of the building, but there's no word yet on a cause.

McDonald said the fire alarms were working.