By Matthew K. Roy
PEABODY — A three-alarm fire early yesterday displaced nine tenants of a two-family home on Collins Street.
The smell of smoke woke Tammy Stevens up shortly after 5:30 a.m. She arose to discover "grayish black" smoke filling up her first-floor apartment. In the bathroom, she saw flames coming from the radiator.
"It was just really bad," she said. "It was scary."
In the apartment with Stevens was her daughter, Kim, and Kim's 5-year-old twins, a boy and a girl. Kim ran upstairs and pounded on the door of the second-floor apartment to rouse the family of five inside, Stevens said.
Everyone escaped without injury. Stevens took her grandson out a back door. Kim exited with her daughter out the front door, according to Stevens.
Smoke alarms did not immediately detect the fire, she said.
"The fire alarms didn't go off until after we left the building," Stevens said.
After subduing the blaze with the help of several area departments, Peabody firefighters and an investigator from the state fire marshal's office spent the day trying to determine the cause of the fire. They closed off a portion of the street, which is a block from Connelly Park and Thomas Carroll Elementary School.
Meanwhile, the property owner, Jane Lawson, said it could take at least two months to repair the 25 Collins St. home.
"I don't even know how much damage there is," said Lawson, who was called to the scene by one of her tenants. "I know that the left side of the house is gone."
Stevens believes the fire might have started in the basement.
"We haven't really heard anything," she said.
Capt. David Sampson declined to speculate about a cause or the fire's origin while the investigation was ongoing.
The Red Cross paid for a hotel room in Danvers for Stevens and her family last night. She is not sure where they will be spending tonight.
"I don't know where we're going to go from here," she said. "I'm just in shock that we don't have a home right now."
