Two Fires Mar Christmas Holiday Weekend

Flames are shown roaring through a three-family home on Bellingham Street on Christmas Eve. No one living there was injured in that fi re although one Chelsea fi refi ghter was taken to the hospital and released shortly thereafter.

A Christmas Eve fire on Spruce Street took the life of a young Chelsea woman and led to the hospitalization of a 33-year-old man who remains in stable but critical condition. Twelve occupants lost their apartments and everything in them.

A small apartment house at the corner of Spruce and Addison Streets burned Christmas Eve causing the death of a Chelsea woman. Another man was seriously injured. Shown above is the boarded up building. Note the burned area by the window of the second floor. This is where a man jumped to save his life

Earlier in the day, a fire on Bellingham Street sent four families into the street. The entire building was destroyed but no one was hurt.

On Spruce Street, the fire took the life of Crystal Blanchard. She was in critical condition when firefighters arrived at the scene of the two- alarm fire about 11:00 p.m. Christmas Eve.

Her 33 year-old friend, who jumped from a second floor window, was badly burned and screaming that his girlfriend was still in the house.

Ladder Two firefighters made their way up the burning staircase and found the woman unconscious. They removed her from the building and initiated CPR.

She was rushed to the Whidden Memorial Hospital in Everett, where she was later pronounced dead.

The fire in the five-unit building destroyed the apartment house at the corner of Spruce and Addison Streets.

About a half-mile away on Bellingham Street 18 hours earlier, a three alarm blaze destroyed a circa 1909, multifamily wooden home, displacing 13 people.

That fire was apparently caused by an electrical problem between the first and second floors, according to Chelsea Fire officials.

On Spruce Street, police and fire officials believe the fatal blaze was probably caused by a strip of electrical heating covered with clothes that might have caught on fire.

In both cases, the Chelsea Fire Department investigations into the cause of the fires are ongoing.

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