Huge fire hits John St. house; Several firefighters injured.

• Position: NEWS

Byline: Thomas Caywood

WORCESTER - As a call firefighter and EMT in Brimfield, Bonnie Francis is no stranger to house fires.

But Ms. Francis didn't expect to be the first person on the scene of an apartment house blaze on her first week in a new job as an insurance agent in Worcester.

Authorities credited Ms. Francis, who works in a building directly behind the house, with persuading the owner to leave the belongings she was struggling to save and to get out of the smoky building at 20 John St.

Overhead, what would become a raging, four-alarm blaze was taking hold in the attic and clawing its way through the roof, authorities said.

"She was throwing stuff out the front door. She had a fire safe in her hands. She threw me her keys and cell phone," Ms. Francis recalled yesterday as acrid, brown smoke wafted across the parking lot of the Wolpert Insurance Agency.

"I said, `You know what, you can't worry about that stuff. You have to get out,'" Ms. Francis recalled. "I said, `We don't have time for that.'"

The woman, the only person home at the time of the fire, which was reported at 1:20 p.m., was desperate to find her three cats. Ms. Francis and a co-worker, Sue Schroeder, raced through the building as it filled with smoke and found two of the cats quickly.

Ms. Francis dashed up to the third floor and threw aside a curtain covering the entryway. "The smoke just billowed out. It was really heavy," she said. "We couldn't find the other cat, and the smoke was getting really heavy. I said, `We have to get out.'"

Later, a black cat cowering on the front porch roof was grabbed by a firefighter on a ladder and dropped safely to the ground as flames shot out of a nearby window.

Several firefighters were overcome by the intense heat of the roaring fire on what was already a hot and humid afternoon. The exact nature of their injuries wasn't immediately available, said Deputy Fire Chief Paul A. Rogacz.

Deputy Chief Rogacz said the fire burst threw the roof and erupted into the sky before firefighters had a chance to cut open the roof to get at the flames in the attic. Part of the roof collapsed into the...