AMHERST — Two residents at a single-family home at 116 Bridge St. were displaced following a Tuesday afternoon fire that is believed to have been caused by the woodstove heating the residence, according to the Amherst Fire Department.
Firefighters got a 911 call at 3:55 p.m. from a passerby who saw smoke coming from the front door of the home in the Cushman section of town in North Amherst, while a second caller reported smoke coming from a second-floor window.
All on-duty and off-duty firefighters were summoned through a box alarm, with nine on-duty firefighters joined by police officers arriving to find a homeowner trying to extinguish a fire in the first-floor living room in the two-story home.
Crews were able to quickly extinguish the active fire around the woodstove and then spent an hour to extinguish the fire that had burned through the wood floor and into the crawl space underneath.
Also on scene were the Amherst Water Department and the town’s building and electrical inspectors. The house, built in 1830 and owned by Joseph O’Rourke and Theresa Angelides, according to town property records, was deemed uninhabitable by the building inspector, due to both the fire damage and the fact that the woodstove had been the only source of heat for the home.
Water was shut off to the structure to prevent pipes from freezing and bursting.
The two residents will be seeking alternative housing. There were no injuries.
The road was closed to traffic for about two hours during the incident.
During the fire, two unrelated medical calls were handled by off-duty firefighters.
The exact cause of the fire is still to be determined, though it is not considered suspicious.