RUMFORD — The state Fire Marshal’s Office is continuing to investigate Tuesday night’s baby stroller fire at a Waldo Street apartment, Rumford fire Chief Bob Chase said Thursday morning.
One upper-floor tenant, Andrew Brochu, 21, suffered minor injuries after jumping about 8 feet to the ground when he saw flames on the first-floor porch, he said. Brochu was taken by Med-Care Ambulance to Rumford Hospital, where he was treated and released.
Chase said the initial call at 7:58 p.m. was a porch fire. Rumford and Mexico firefighters went to the four-story apartment building. They found a small fire in the driveway, Chase said, and quickly extinguished it.
He said the fire was on a second-floor porch. The tenant in that apartment had gone to an upper-floor apartment to visit someone, started to smell smoke and went back downstairs to find a small fire in a baby stroller in front of his door, he said.
“He had family and kids inside his home, so he did what he could to put out the fire,” Chase said. “He used a squirt nozzle from the sink to try and put out the fire, and then he picked up and tossed the burning stroller into the driveway.”
Brochu, Chase said, “was trying to come down the stairs, saw the fire and bailed off the railing.” Firefighters called for an ambulance.
Because of the injury and the fire being considered suspicious, state fire investigator Dan Young was called to investigate.
“We couldn’t immediately find a cause for the fire,” Chase said.
Chase said he didn’t know the name of the tenant who tried to extinguish the fire before throwing the stroller off the porch, but credited his actions with preventing the building from catching fire.
“He did what he could to help us,” he said. “His attentiveness significantly reduced the threat to the building.”
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