GENEVA — Wrapped in a blanket and her sister’s comforting arms, Wendy Layton watched helplessly from the road as firefighters knocked out walls and broke the windows to her apartment Thursday.
Five fire departments responded to a structure fire at 386 E. Main St., Geneva Fire Chief Doug Starkey said. Emergency crews worked to contain the flames inside the large multifamily dwelling just off Route 20. Starkey said the Geneva firefighters welcomed all the help they could get for this particular fire.
“Based on the amount of smoke coming from a roof that size, we were concerned about the balloon construction of the structure and needed a quick knockdown of the fire,” he said.
Starkey said firefighters from Harpersfield, Saybrook and Austinburg township fire departments, as well as those from Geneva and Madison, arrived on the scene quickly and began spraying extinguishing foam into the walls and eaves of the house.
“We were concerned about the extension of the fire,” Starkey said. “We knew there would be hot spots in the building.”
Drivers detoured around the fire, as Route 20, just east of Rosemary’s Pizza, was closed for several hours.
The large three-story house, owned by Kenneth Piper, has three apartments, third-floor resident Wendy Layton said. One apartment was vacant, she said.
Layton said her husband, Delbert, was home at the time of the fire, smelled smoke and called the fire department.
“The smoke was coming from a storage space off of the bathroom,” Layton said. “It is like a cubbyhole, a crawl space,” she said. “It seems like it spread from there.”
Layton believes the fire was electrical.
“It was in the walls,” she said. “It even seemed to spread through the walls.”
Starkey said the official fire cause is undetermined and it is unclear how much damage was done to the building.
The Laytons will stay with other family members and were assisted by the Ashtabula County American Red Cross. Their 6-year-old daughter, Ashley, was at school at the time of the fire.
Wendy Layton’s sister, Kris Turk, said the family is “in shock.”
“It is a lot to think about,” she said. “It is a lot to wrap your mind around.”
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