AMHERST — Functioning smoke detectors and residents’ quick thinking to seal off the room in which a fire started prevented more extensive damage to a home early Tuesday morning, according to Amherst Fire Chief Tim Nelson.
While a bedroom inside the residence at 116 High St. sustained significant damage, no one was hurt in the fire and everyone got out safely from the dwelling, Nelson said.
“It shows how important working smoke detectors are,” Nelson said. “If they didn’t have those, we’d be talking about a much worse outcome than we did.”
All on-duty firefighters responded to the home at 2:12 a.m. after getting a 911 call from residents, who heard the alarms sounding throughout the home as part of an interconnected alarm system. Nelson said a resident went from room to room to locate the source of the fire, and once at a second-floor bedroom where the fire was taking place, closed the door, preventing the fire from spreading.
“The smartest thing the resident did was to shut the door. That kept the fire in that one room,” Nelson said.
Firefighters remained on scene until about 4:30 a.m., extinguishing the fire and keeping other occupants of the home, including cats and fish, safe.
While a cause for the fire is not yet official Nelson said investigators are looking closely at a possibly malfunctioning heating unit.
Nelson said the residents are staying with a neighbor, but should be able to return in a day or two, once soot and smoke are cleaned up. He said the bedroom where the fire started will need to be gutted and renovated.
Scott Merzbach can be reached at smerzbach@gazettenet.com.
