Boston Blaze Sparks Series of Fireworks Explosions

A nine-alarm fire Thursday in the city’s Chinatown sparked about half an hour of small explosions from one building that authorities blamed on illegally stored fireworks.

The fire, believed to have been sparked by a welder’s torch, ignited on the second floor of a seven-story building and shot through the building before jumping to the upper levels of an adjacent nine-story structure.

Firefighters thought they were containing the blaze in the second building about an hour later when a series of loud snapping noises rang out. Fire officials blamed the explosions on boxes of fireworks lining at least one floor of the structure.

The explosions lasted for about half an hour, causing some of the several hundred people in the lunchtime crowd to cover their ears. Streams of water mixed with ash and shards of glass also showered down on the street, prompting onlookers to scatter.

“The top floor (of the second building) is just loaded” with fireworks, one fire official said. “There’s just box after box.”

Fire Department Capt. Matthew Corbett said there was no warning of the fireworks and no immediate indication of who put them there.

“Somebody counted 29 explosions on the upper floor,” Fire Commissioner Leo Stapleton said. “They just kept going. . . . That’s naturally an illegal storage.”

Fire officials also said one sprinkler system in the first building had been shut down and another was not working.

No one was believed trapped in either building and no serious injuries were reported, although at least eight firefighters were treated for minor injuries and two civilians were treated for smoke inhalation, officials said.