MEXICO — A kitchen stove fire in a first-floor apartment at 131 Granite St. scrambled about 20 firefighters from Mexico and Rumford to the scene late Saturday afternoon.
No one was injured, but one child with asthma, who said he was in the apartment when the smoky fire broke out, was given oxygen inside a Med-Care ambulance. Firefighters also rescued the young boy’s pet, a painted turtle, Frankie, much to the boy’s relief.
Tenants in the three-story building had already fled when the first of three firetrucks, Mexico police officer Daniel Carrier and Med-Care arrived at about 4:45 p.m.
Carrier and the Med-Care crew quickly helped the first firefighters on scene get hoses off the firetrucks and coupled together as brown-and-white smoke wafted out the open front door of the apartment.
The child’s worried mother ran up to Carrier and told him that her son’s pet turtle was still in the apartment. Carrier then alerted firefighters busy donning self-contained air packs and face masks prior to climbing a set of rickety wooden stairs to enter the building.
A burning spice rack was thrown out of the apartment onto the front lawn, where another firefighter extinguished it.
Soon, one firefighter emerged carefully carrying a glass bowl with soot-blackened water and the turtle, taking it down the sidewalk to its relieved owner. The happy child dumped out the smoky water and refilled the bowl with clean water from a nearby brook.
Exhaust fans were set up in both first-floor apartments to rid them of smoke. Windows were opened on all three floors and cellar windows were removed to air out the building.
Scene commander Mexico fire Deputy Chief Richard Jones said the tenant in the first-floor apartment on the right was cooking french fries in a grease pot on the stove when the fire started.
“I don’t think there was a whole lot of grease in it and it overheated, and then it started bubbling over and it caught fire,” Jones said.
Jones said he didn’t know the tenant’s name, but she grabbed a fire extinguisher and sprayed the fire. Smoke detectors were working and sounding.
But the initial call from dispatchers in Paris, who took the 911 call for help, radioed firefighters that it was a structure fire. That automatically sends out Rumford firefighters and Med-Care in a mutual-aid response.
“When the first crew went inside, there was no fire,” Jones said. “It was out, so there’s very minimal damage to the kitchen area. The stove will have to be replaced because the fire burned the knobs right off it.”
Additionally, firefighters had to pull some of the ceiling down to ensure the fire on the wall behind the stove didn’t extend into the ceiling. The ceiling and a section of the burned wall behind the stove will have to be replaced, Jones said.
He said the whole apartment suffered soot and smoke damage and will have to be cleaned. Jones said the left-side apartment on the first floor filled with smoke, but once it was aired out, its tenants were allowed to return, as were the rest of the buildings’ tenants.
American Red Cross officials from Lewiston were on the way to help the mother and son find a place to stay in the area and provide them with necessities, Jones said.
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- Several Mexico and Rumford firefighters head up the stairs and into two smoke-filled, first-floor apartments late Saturday afternoon at 131 Granite St. in Mexico after a 911 caller alerted dispatchers in Paris to a structure fire in the kitchen.
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- A burning spice rack smolders on the lawn at 131 Granite St. in Mexico after firefighters threw it out of the house late Saturday afternoon while rooting out a kitchen stove fire that spread to a wall.
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- A firefighter at right carefully carries Frankie, a painted turtle pet, in a bowl of sooty water after rescuing it from inside a Granite Street apartment that filled with smoke following a kitchen stove fire. The turtle’s owner refilled the bowl with clean water from a nearby brook.
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