EFD battles flames at abandoned warehouse

  A two-alarm fire gutted a vacant warehouse at 69 Norman St. during the late evening hours of January 23.

  The building had been empty for the past year and a half and was slated for demolition to make way for Artemas, a 398-unit apartment building. In June 2021, the property was purchased for $18 million by Lennar Multifamily Communities, a property management company in Charlotte, North Carolina.

  The fire did not result in any injuries.

  “If anybody was in the building, there’s nothing that could’ve been done. The building was fully involved,” said Deputy Fire Chief Lawrence Cardinale. “It had a lot of void spaces. It was very difficult to get the water on certain parts of the building. It was just an old, very old building and it had the big timber which probably had a lot of either, like, oil or other type of substance that was just embedded in all the wood.”

  A state HAZMAT team was called in as fire crews were concerned about burning chemicals.

  Firefighters also saw that flames had spread to a neighboring parking garage and a telephone pole, causing a transformer to explode. Therefore, National Grid temporarily shut off power to the surrounding area. No additional information was available as the cause of the blaze remains under investigation. The property owner could not be reached for comment.