The Mary Jane Home Enrichment Center caught fire Monday in Francisville, leaving the building destroyed. Now, the nonprofit organization that has helped the community through clothing, housing, and feeding people is left looking for ways to rebuild. NBC10’s Leah Uko has more on the story.
People were forced from their homes as a fire tore through a North Philadelphia building Monday.
The Philadelphia Fire Department responded to the burning three-story structure along the 1600 block of Ridge Avenue in the Francisville neighborhood just before 4 p.m., according to officials.
A second alarm was issued around 4:20 p.m. It would take about 100 fire crew members to battle the blaze.
Assistant Deputy Director Derek Bowmer said people were evacuated from the burning building and the building next to it. There were about 20 people displaced due to the fire and he said no one injured.
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Bowmer also said the fire did spread to a four-story property right next to the first building and that building sustained damage and those who lived there were evacuated as well.
At around 7:30 p.m. the PFD said the fire was under control. It doesn’t mean they put the fire out it just means they know where the flames were coming from and were able to control it.
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About 15 to 20 people live inside the building that caught fire first.
“My friend called me and she’s lives next door to me and she was like 'are you home?' I was like 'no, why?' She was like the building is on fire," Carmen Santiago, one of the residents displaced by the fire said.
“Loss of words man," said another resident who was not home at the time of the fire and came back to find the building on fire.
"As of right now, I still got to wait. So, I’m like how long is the wait process. I already talked to my landlord, and he says there is no update. And it supposedly came from one of the rooms on the second floor, which I live on. Thank god I wasn’t there," he said.
SkyForce10 was over the scene. Firefighters could be seen fighting the fire from the front and the back of the building.
Heavy smoke and flames could be seen in the sky in the area of Ridge and Parrish.
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