HOLYOKE — Hector Ocasio awoke Friday morning to the sound of his wife screaming that the South Bridge Street apartment building their family resides in had caught fire.
“I saw a lot of smoke … we got my two kids and got out,” he said. “Everybody was screaming and running.”
The Ocasio family is among 25 tenants who have been displaced as a result of the fire that consumed the four-story building.
The Holyoke Fire Department received two 911 calls around 5:30 a.m. reporting the fire at 549-551 South Bridge St. When emergency personnel arrived, firefighters could see fire coming out of the two center windows above the front door, according to Fire Capt. David Rex.
When the structural integrity of the building was in question and it was deemed unsafe for firefighters to enter the building, the department used three aerial ladders to combat the fire.
“The stairs (in the center of the building) were immediately compromised and firefighters could not make entry through the main entrance,” Rex said.
Firefighters were able to extinguish the fire by 9 a.m., but ran into some challenges getting water to the hot spots as firefighters could not safely enter the building, he said.
Emergency personnel also were unable to enter the first-floor business, South Bridge Market, as of early afternoon to assess the extent of the destruction.
The Fire Department received mutual aid station coverage from the South Hadley and Chicopee fire departments.
All residents were able to safely evacuate through the rear entrance of the building. No injuries were reported as of Friday afternoon.
The American Red Cross provided some assistance to the displaced residents, but as of early afternoon, Ocasio was still not sure where he and his family would be staying.
Rex said that the Massachusetts Emergency Management Agency also was contacted to activate a relief team to assist residents with getting new important paperwork and identifying information as they would not be allowed back in the building to retrieve any items.
The back corner of the roof collapsed and the center of the cockloft — the cramped, unusable space between the topmost ceiling of the building and the roof — had collapsed in on itself, Rex said. The building is considered a total loss at this time, he said.
The building was built in the early 1900s and is assessed at $146,600, according to city records.
The cause of the fire is still under investigation by Holyoke Fire and the state Fire Marshal’s office.
Emily Thurlow can be reached at ethurlow@gazettenet.com.
