


LYNN — A fire that began with a malfunctioning ceiling fan spread undetected through the walls and crawl spaces of a Lynn apartment building before finally triggering an alarm Sunday morning — giving a head start to a blaze that would ravage the building and leave about 65 people homeless on New Year’s Day, officials said.
The 7:36 a.m. alarm sent an automatic signal to the Fire Department at the same time it roused residents, meaning the first engines were already closing in just as the 911 calls started to come in, said District Chief Steve Archer of the Lynn Fire Department.
By then, the fire had been raging secretly for some time; smoke was already seeping from the roof line and gathering behind the front door of 22 West Baltimore St., a four-story brick-and-masonry building with 26 apartments, officials said.
“It’s just devastating,’’ said Stanley Sterling, a second-floor resident, pointing out the blue curtains of the apartment where he lived for a decade. “And what makes it really bad is that it’s the first of the year.’’
Firefighters helped the last of the residents escape safely — carrying out one man who was uninjured but had impaired mobility — and ran hoses throughout the building but found the fire too widespread and intense to fight it safely from inside, Archer said.
“The fire progressed very rapidly throughout the building, and we began striking multiple alarms and went fairly quickly up to five alarms,’’ with 15 engine companies and five ladder trucks, Archer said.
As thick smoke billowed over the neighborhood and fanned out over the nearby Atlantic, firefighters spent about five hours blasting the building with hoses from atop several ladders, an adjacent rooftop, and the ground below. Then they returned to the inside, seeking out remaining hot spots while investigators made their way alongside. Two firefighters sustained minor injuries, and one of them was transported to a local hospital, Archer said.
By mid-afternoon, the state fire marshal’s office and Lynn investigators had pinpointed the apparent cause: an electrical or mechanical malfunction in a first-floor ceiling fan, said Jennifer Mieth, spokeswoman for the state Department of Fire Services. The fire then spread unseen through spaces above ceilings and behind walls where no detectors had been placed, she said.
The fire was declared extinguished after about nine hours. The building — assessed at a structural value of $1 million, atop a lot also valued at $1 million — will likely be a total loss, Archer said. The city set up a shelter at Lynn Classical High School and will accept gift cards and other donations for fire victims this week at the LynnArts building.
In a neighborhood known as Sagamore Hill — a mix of stately Victorians, vinyl-sided three-deckers, and larger apartment buildings — uphill from Nahant Beach, scores of residents stood for hours, watching the firefighters work and capturing footage on their phones as water ran in torrents out the foyer of the century-old building. Flames from hot spots sometimes flared up amid the smoke, and chunks of roof and trim crashed to the ground.
Many from the building were huddled around the corner in an MBTA bus for warmth, some in pajamas and slippers, soon to head to what officials dubbed a “reunification center’’ at Lynn City Hall. Others, such as Sterling and Wanda Whitaker, stayed at the scene, waiting for information, hoping they might get back in.
Both said the alarm startled them awake, but that it goes off occasionally — triggered by someone burning something in the kitchen, say — so they and others initially thought it might be another false alarm. Whitaker, a 22-year-old social work graduate student, lingered in bed with her kitten, Theo. “Then I heard somebody say, ‘Fire! Fire! Fire!’ ’’ She grabbed Theo and her car keys and ran.
“Now I’m looking back, I’m thinking there’s so many things I could’ve grabbed; a car is so materialistic,’’ said Whitaker, who fled in Betty Boop pajama pants, dress shoes, and a fleece from the health center where she is an outreach worker. While she didn’t grab her purse and ID, the car keys at least allowed her to lock Theo in a safe place amid the chaos.
Sterling, who works as the building’s cleaner, did not have time to grab his own cat, Boy Hendrix. He looked longingly at the building, hoping the tuxedo cat might be hiding safely in the basement. He said he had roused his wife, tried the front door, and opened it to a shock of smoke. “I’m talking about billowing smoke, all white,’’ said Sterling, 58, who called for neighbors to clear out. “And I just ran out.’’
Around the corner on Nahant Street, in front of the bus where residents were staying warm, neighbor Joe Cresta handed out socks, let the displaced use his bathroom, and brought a heaping bowl of pasta — with Bolognese sauce made by his partner, Paul Phillips — to supplement the coffee and doughnuts supplied by the Red Cross.
“It was left over from [a New Year’s party], a lot more than I can eat, and it will do more good here than in my belly or in my refrigerator later,’’ Cresta said, quietly taking in the scene from his porch. “It’s such a sad thing, oh my God.’’
►One killed in fire at Holyoke apartment building. B5
Eric Moskowitz can be reached at eric.moskowitz@globe.com. Follow him on Twitter @GlobeMoskowitz.