The view from Lafayette Square.
Relief crews stepped in by Monday afternoon for Haverhill area firefighters as containment and cleanup efforts at the 14-30 Stevens Street mill building fire scene continue into the evening.
Fresh crews from as close as Andover and as far as the town of Ayer are working to contain a few remaining hot spots from Sunday’s seven-alarm blaze in relief for Haverhill firefighters, according to interim Haverhill Fire Chief John Parow.
“When the floors come down fire get sandwiched in between the floors, so we’re trying to dig that out with high pressure hose lines. And we brought in some fresh crews from outside of Essex County. We brought in crews from Ayer, Littleton, Andover and Chelmsford to allow the city of Haverhill to take their apparatus back to the respective stations and get them back in service. They were pretty much depleted after fighting the fire all night,” Parow said.
And while traffic through Lafayette Square between Essex Street and the intersection of Broadway and Hilldale Avenue was restored this morning, Parow said he expects a street closure on Winter Street leading into Lafayette Square to remain at least until the evening commute.
“The heavy hoses is off the street but it’s just where everybody’s still working out there, it’s still a dangerous area,” Parow added. “Thank God for mutual aid companies, we had 19 different towns in last night and some of them sent multiple pieces of apparatus. We probably had 100, 125 firefighters on scene.”
The blaze destroyed the former site of Hudson Machinery Company and brought mutual aid from such area communities as Amesbury, Andover, Atkinson, Lawrence, Methuen, Plaistow and West Newbury. Haverhill firefighters battled the blaze from both sides of Little River. Other fire departments covered Haverhill fire stations.
No injuries were reported and a cause of the fire remains unknown at this time. The state fire marshal has been at the scene assisting Haverhill fire investigators, Parow said.
It would be nice to list all of the cities and towns who sent aid. Let’s give all of them a personal acknowledgement.
Jack the council had made zoning changes so the mayor was aware of a pending development proposal. He may have not know who the owners, buyers etc were but he did have knowledge of rehab of the property.
So now it’s time to find out the truth about statements the mayor made.
At the scene of the fire The Taxman started making comments that “he” had meetings set up for this week with a developer to possibly buy the property. Now we learn that a tenant of the building actually had a pending purchase and sale agreement to buy the property. So which was it? The mayor trying to take credit for something he had no involvement in again?????