Firefighters used ladders to rescue residents trapped above a downtown Portsmouth fire before multiple buildings collapsed.
The fire broke out around 12:30 a.m. Monday on State Street above the historic and popular State Street Saloon and quickly began to spread to the apartments above.
Rescuers used ladders to get trapped residents out of the building, and luckily no injuries were reported.
“The people that were rescued with the ladder are fine,” Portsmouth fire Chief Stephen Achilles said. “We did have one firefighter that had minor injuries, and he’s being transferred (to a hospital) for evaluation. Everybody else is accounted for. Especially after the building collapsed we did an accountability of all of our firefighters and found that none of them were injured.”
The owner of a nearby restaurant said seeing the fire and buildings collapse was a shock to see.
“They really had the scene under control,” he said. “When the building came down they got everybody out of the way.”
Crews were forced to fight the fire from the outside because of the intense flames and building collapses.
The cause of the fire is under investigation.
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