Fire Destroys Apartment House on Bridge Street in Mont Clare

A two alarm blaze broke out in a house directly across the street from a firehouse on Bridge Street in Mont Clare Tuesday morning, drawing up to 100 firefighters at the height of the firefight.

Black Rock Fire Company Battalion Chief Rich Hughes tells Patch the call went out at 8:57 a.m. at a time when only an ambulance crew was at the firehouse, which is the secondary of two fire stations serving Mont Clare and Upper Providence Township.  The station is staffed completely by volunteers who raced to the scene when the call came in.


Witnesses describe what they saw as the fire was burning. Patch readers add their observations in the comments here on Phoenixville Patch


Hughes says firefighters from seven other fire companies in the region were called in.  Several more fire companies from Radnor, Berwyn and Harleysville sent trucks to be on standby at firehouses that had crews on the fire scene. 

According to Hughes the fire was declared under control by 10:10 a.m..  The house that burned was home to at least five people in four apartment units, witnesses told Patch late Tuesday afternoon.

Hughes told Patch that he had never fire break out directly across from a firehouse in all his 34 years in the fire service. "You always hear about it (fires in homes adjacent to or near a fire station), you always hear about these stories in the news. I have never seen it before," he said.

Hughes said that the cause of the fire was still being investigated by the Fire Marshall.