Swampscott firefighters aided by other departments fought a two-alarm fire early Monday morning that extensively damaged a home at 31 Mountwood Road.
“On arrival, there was heavy fire showing from the attic area. The guys made a great stop,” Fire Capt. Kevin Thompson said.
He said no one was hurt, although a male resident was taken to Salem Hospital to be examined after slipping on ice in front of the home. Two people lived in the house.
Thompson said firefighters faced several challenges fighting the fire when they converged on Mountwood, a narrow dead-end street, at 3:02 a.m. Trees and the home’s location on a slight rise above the street made it difficult to extend an aerial ladder to the house.
Firefighters tracked the fire to the 2 1/2 story home’s attic. But Thompson said the fire shifted from the ceiling between the second floor and the attic, to an attic corner space and then to the center of house. He estimated the fire had been burning for “quite a bit of time” before residents’ became aware of it and initially tried to extinguish it.
Thompson said the fire was declared out at 6:26 a.m. Firefighters from Lynn, Salem, Nahant and Marblehead assisted Swampscott crews in extinguishing the fire. Thompson said the home is uninhabitable for some time.
