7 Houses Damaged, Firefighter Falls Through Roof in Manor Park Area Blaze

Seven houses were damaged in Northwest Washington yesterday in a fire that burned with an intensity that matched the fierce heat of the midsummer's day.

Four houses in the 200 block of Longfellow Street in the Manor Park area were heavily damaged, D.C. Fire and Emergency Services Department spokesman Alan Etter said. A firefighter fell through a roof but was not seriously injured, Etter said.

Heat from the fire in the Longfellow Street houses seared three houses across an alley on Kansas Avenue NW, Etter said. Damage there was considerably less, he said.

"It was a terrible fire," said Bertha A. Robinson, a neighborhood resident.

"We were very concerned," said D.C. Council member Muriel Bowser (D-Ward 4) who went to the scene.

The cause of the blaze, which apparently spread to houses on both sides of the one where it started, was not immediately known.

Damage is likely to amount to hundreds of thousands of dollars, Etter said.

The fire was reported about 2:40 p.m. , on an afternoon in which the temperature in Washington reached 90 degrees for the third day in a row and the eighth time this month.

The day was also one characterized by air quality unhealthy enough to prompt the Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments to issue a Code Red alert.

On such days, the council recommends that people limit strenuous outdoor work and exercise.

It was, of course, not possible to follow that recommendation on Longfellow Street yesterday.

But Etter said the large number of firefighters sent to the scene, about 180, was in part because of the weather. "It was so hot," he said, that officials "had to rotate firefighters on a pretty regular basis."