WEST LEBANON — The city’s fire and police departments are investigating a Sunday morning fire at The Village at Crafts Hill Apartments, where a woman and three cats were rescued.
The Lebanon Fire Department was dispatched just before 7 a.m. on Sunday to a report of smoke in a building at the 100-unit apartment complex.
On arrival, firefighters encountered heavy smoke coming from the main entrance of a two-story, multi-unit apartment building, according to a Lebanon Fire Department news release.
Firefighters traced the fire to Unit 74 on the ground level.
“There was a small amount of flames in the apartment,” said Lebanon Fire Chief James Wheatley. “It was mostly high-heat conditions and smoke conditions inside the apartment.”
That apartment was vacant when firefighters arrived.
But a firefighter searching the second floor found a woman “calling for help,” Wheatley said. He declined to identify the woman, citing medical privacy laws, he said.
She had been trapped on the second floor by heavy smoke conditions in the vestibule outside her apartment.
Firefighters rescued her and she took an ambulance to Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center for treatment for smoke inhalation, the release said.
Inside the second-floor apartment where firefighters found the woman, they also found three cats who were safe.
Firefighters contained the blaze to the apartment where the flames broke out and declared it under control by 8 a.m. Sunday.
Unit 74 “sustained a lot of smoke and heat damage,” Wheatley said. “Structurally, it’s okay … but all the things on the surface will have to be completely gutted and redone.”
The remainder of the building also sustained smoke damage, but tenants of other units weren’t displaced.
The apartment complex is owned by the White River Junction-based nonprofit Twin Pines Housing Trust. Efforts to reach Twin Pines Executive Director Andrew Winter by phone on Monday were not immediately successful.
The cause of the fire is under investigation by the Lebanon Fire and Police departments.
“(The cause) does not appear to be suspicious at this point,” Wheatley said.
This is not the first time there has been a fire in this apartment complex. A March 2018 fire at the Village at Crafts Hill sent nine people to DHMC for smoke inhalation treatment. The cause of that fire was undetermined by Lebanon fire officials due to the severity of the damage.
Firefighters from Hartford, Hanover and Windsor assisted in the response on Sunday, as did members of the Lebanon Police Department. Enfield, Canaan, Woodstock and Plainfield helped cover Lebanon fire stations.
