COLCHESTER -An early morning house fire posed many problems for firefighters in Colchester. Fox 61s Taylor DiChello was first on the scene there, and says firefighters were called out about 4:40 Sunday morning. They had to climb down steep stairs to the house that is right on the shore of Pickerel Lake. Once inside, they were hit with a wall of smoke and couldn’t even find the fire for the first 20 minutes.
The lone occupant told firefighters her smoke alarms went off, and she woke up in a cloud of smoke.
Colchester Deputy Fire Chief Donald Lee says “In this case it saved her life.” Without a working smoke detector, she would have never woken up. Lee said “The C-O would have overtaken her; she would have gone into a deep sleep and died. This would have been a tragedy if we didn’t have working smoke detectors.”
Based on the preliminary investigation, officials believe the fire started when an electrical appliance short circuited.
Although the home had no structural damage, the woman will have to stay with family because heavy soot and smoke from burning plastic is not healthy to live in.