Four Escape Fire At Stop & Shop Staff Housing Unit

Nantucket firefighters extinguished a structure fire Tuesday night at 15 Wampanoag Way - an apartment building used by Stop & Shop for staff housing - in a densely developed neighborhood near Nantucket Memorial Airport. Four residents managed to escape the blaze unharmed. 

The fire was reported around 8:25 p.m., prompting a massive response by fire and police personnel down Old South Road.

Julian Haddad, a resident of the apartment at 15 Wampanoag Way, told the Current four people were inside the structure when his roommate knocked on his door and yelled “the house is on fire!”

“I went outside and the whole back of the house was engulfed,” Haddad said. “By the time we noticed it, the flames were licking around the side of the house, and it was spreading to the porch. I pulled the alarm and called the fire department. I ran out and made sure everyone got out. They (firefighters) were here in less than 5 minutes. The sky was lit up.”

Nantucket Fire Chief Michael Cranson said two engines, a ladder truck, and an ambulance responded to the scene, along with him and the department's deputy chiefs.

"We received a report of a structure fire, that the house was fully involved with people inside," Cranson said Tuesday night. "There was a lot of fire on the exterior of the house on the backside. It had broken through and set off two sprinkler heads on the first floor and second floor, so there was some extension on those floors and in the basement. The firefighters did a good job of knocking it down quickly, but we had to do a lot of overhaul. There were four people living in the house, but we were able to determine quickly that they had made it out and were accounted for, and that made it easier. Stop & Shop is going to put them up somewhere for the night."

Cranson added that there were no injuries and moderate damage to the structure from the fire, smoke, and water. The quick response by the responding firefighters, he said, prevented a larger incident considering the location of the building and the windy conditions Tuesday night.

"It was a dangerous day for something like this to happen," Cranson said. "Today was a high fire danger day, a notice put out by the state and the National Weather Service, because of the low humidity and high winds."

The cause of the fire is undetermined and remains under investigation, he said, but it did start on the outside of the house. 

The apartment building at 15 Wampanoag Way is located off Old South Road in a densely developed commercial and residential neighborhood north of the airport, located between Macy Lane and Nobadeer Farm Road.

The structure was built in 1994, according to the Nantucket Assessor's database, and is owned by Windsurfer LLC, a limited liability company registered to Peter Dobynes, the president and founder of Coastal Construction Corp.