Local

Families lose homes, firefighter injured in West Bridgewater fire

WEST BRIDGEWATER, Mass. — Two families lost their homes and nearly all their possessions in a house fire Wednesday night.

One firefighter battling the East Center Street fire was rushed to the hospital with minor injuries but is expected to recover.

Heather Spaur, who is battling cancer and was home resting following cataract surgery, when shortly after 5 p.m., she heard the screams to evacuate.

“All of a sudden, I hear screaming,” Spaur said. “The curdling screaming of, ‘Heather, get out of the house!’ That scream that you could never imagine.”

The screams were coming from the owner of the home who had escaped with her children.

Spaur and her daughter ran from their burning apartment at the back of the house, joining her other two children outside.

“When I got up, the door was fire. Fire burning up the whole wall,” Spaur said, adding that she could not escape that way. “I got my other daughter, ran down the stairs, and we could hear that [popping sound]. You know, that whole door was gone.”

Spaur threw her cat outside to safely and expects it will return. But some of the owner’s pets are missing, she said.

“The owners of this house have helped me, because I have cancer,” Spaur said. “They’ve let me stay here. So that’s another story in itself [of] how wonderful they are.”

Spaur watched helplessly as firefighters from several towns battled the flames. Because the fire spread so quickly from the back corner of the home up to the attic, crews were limited in their attack.

“It was already well involved when we got here,” said West Bridgewater Fire Chief Kenneth May. “We tried to get into the second floor. We couldn’t get there.”

As firefighters investigate the cause, they say the fact that the fire happened while everyone was awake may have saved lives.

“If this was in the nighttime, when everybody was sleeping, it would’ve been a whole different story,” May said.

While Spaur lost nearly everything in her home, she is trying to focus on what her family still has: each other.

“It’s awful, but my kids are all fine,” Spaur said. “Everybody’s fine. Thank the lord for that. There’s nothing else higher than your kids.”