A lightning strike over the weekend destroyed a building near the Morristown/Stowe border that housed four apartments. No one was injured, but the blaze left 10 people without a place to live.
Morristown Fire Department chief Dennis DiGregorio said the fire, at 525 Sterling Ridge Road in Morristown, started shortly before 7 a.m. Sunday. Seven departments responded to help put out the fire, which was finally extinguished around 2:30 p.m.
“Everyone was out of the building when we got there, so we could concentrate on putting the fire out and not a rescue,” DiGregorio said.
He said the Red Cross was quickly on the scene to help the tenants. The Stowe Community Fund has also been working with them, helping gather donated clothing and issuing sizable checks to help with the tenants’ immediate needs, according to Leigh Pelletier, the fund’s co-chair.
Pelletier said one of the tenants, a man named Patrick, is a diabetic who lost much of his medical supplies in the fire, along with everything else. DiGregorio said firefighters were able to get into his unit and grab his insulin from the refrigerator.
Pelletier said tenants — which includes two families, one with three kids under the age of 7 — were all more concerned with how their neighbors were faring, especially the diabetic man.
“What really impressed me is how much they are really looking out for each other,” Pelletier said. “They were all like, ‘Can you go and check on Patrick?’”
There are four separate online fundraisers set up for people in the four units who have been displaced, and people can donate to the cause to Stowe Community Fund, which will divide the money up among them.
To find all four fundraisers, go to the Stowe Community Fund Facebook page. Links to the fundraisers will also be included in the online version of this story.
Assisting Morristown on Sunday were fire departments from Stowe, Elmore, Wolcott, Hyde Park, Johnson, Cambridge and Waterbury.
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