It could be days before a 10-alarm inferno that ravaged an apartment complex under construction off Elm Street in Waltham early this morning is sufficiently extinguished for investigators to begin combing through the destruction, fire officials said.
All 264 units in five residential buildings on the banks of the Charles River, which were slated to begin accepting tenants later this year, were lost, Waltham Fire Chief Paul Ciccone said. Employees of Bridgewater-based Callahan Construction, watched in stunned disbelief as their project on the former site of a mulch yard spiraled upwards in billowing plumes of gray smoke.