Family homeless after oven fire

NASHUA-A family is homeless after an oven fire activated a sprinkler system in their apartment Thursday night.

Firefighters responded to the six-unit apartment building at 67 Palm St. at about 5:08 p.m. after a teen that was baby-sitting a sibling at her family’s apartment called 911 and reported an oven fire, Nashua Fire Rescue Deputy Chief Michael O’Brien said.

Arriving to the apartment, firefighters found the teen and her sibling outside of the building and heavy smoke pouring from family’s apartment.

Fire crews evacuated about 12 other tenants from the building and entered the apartment, where they found a fire that had been contained to an oven by an activated fire sprinkler, O’Brien said.

The fire was determined to be caused by food that ignited in the oven, he said.

Fire crews extinguished the remaining fire in the oven and then began work to ventilate smoke from the building and remove some of the water from the family’s apartment, O’Brien said.

Although the sprinkler had kept the fire from spreading, the two-bedroom apartment was left with extensive water damage and the apartment was deemed temporarily uninhabitable, he said.

“There was about half an inch of water on the floor,” O’Brien said.

Red Cross officials were assisting the family, he said.