VIDEO: Dozens of people have been displaced by a massive fire at a condo building in Boxboro. As firefighters poured water on the smoldering brick shell on Swanson Road, one longtime resident stood nearby in shock. “I’ve lived there for 45 years, so there’s a lot of memories there,” one woman said.
It was just after five o’clock when firefighters responding to a call for smoke in the attic were greeted by an inferno.
It would soon go to four alarms, drawing troops from several surrounding towns. But Boxboro does not have a municipal water system, meaning no hydrants, forcing them to pull water from nearby ponds when their tanker trucks run dry. The chief said they had bigger problems. “Actually the challenging part was evacuating people, before we even got water, was getting people out of the building,” said Boxboro Fire Chief Paul Fillebrown. “Because people didn’t want to leave.”