Four-Alarm Blaze Strikes Warehouse At Industrial Park

A four-alarm fire, which burned for over seven hours, destroyed more than half of an empty warehouse in the Fawcett Industrial Park in North Cambridge Sunday night.

Representatives of Fawcett Services Inc., the owners of the industrial complex, were not available for an estimation of the damage.

W.C. Griffin, chief deputy of the Cambridge Fire Department, said yesterday that firemen responded to the call at approximately 7:45 p.m. Sunday and had the fire under control by 3 a.m. However, firemen were still hosing down the rubble as late as 3 p.m. yesterday to make sure the fire stayed out.

Boston Moves In

In addition to the four alarms sounded in Cambridge, the Boston Fire Devartment dispatched three companies and a ladder truck to the fire.

There were no persons in the warehouse at the time of the fire and no injuries have been reported.

Griffin said firemen will have to unpile much of the rubble before they can begin investigating the cause of the fire.

Although the warehouse stored nothing extremely flammable, the owners kept oil on the premises for the company garage, Griffin said. However, he added there was never a real danger of it igniting.

Griffin said firemen faced problems with gusty winds from the overnight storm, which threatened to spread the fire to adjoining buildings, but they managed to confine the fire to the warehouse.

A Tight Spot

Limited access to the warehouse also hindered the firemen, Griffin said. The industrial park lies beyond a group of dead-end streets, preventing fire units from approaching. In addition, because the fire began on the second floor, firemen could not enter the building on the ground floor since the ceiling might collapse.