Banks Street Fire Kills Resident

A three-alarm fire tore through a Harvard-owned house at 47-49 Banks St. in the early morning hours the day after Thanksgiving, claiming the life of one inhabitant and reducing the building to rubble.

The building, which housed two Harvard graduate students and Cambridge resident Gladys Evans, 78, was consumed by an accidental blaze, according to Cambridge Fire Department Chief of Operations John Gialanis. He said the department plans to issue a formal report about the fire’s cause today.

Evans, the building’s only inhabitant at the time, died in the fire. Her nieces arrived bearing Thanksgiving leftovers just as crews removed the body from the blaze on Friday morning, the Boston Globe reported.

Firefighters arrived at the three-story house around 4:50 a.m., 10 minutes after they received reports of smoke in the area, Gialanis said.

They contained the fire within an hour, but the crew of more than 60 personnel remained on the scene for the next five to six hours until the fire was completely extinguished, according to Gialanis.

Gialanis said the fire department became aware that Evans was in the building early on in the operation.

“Since we knew she was deceased at the time, we waited until the medical examiner arrived to remove the body,” he said.

Evans, a life-long Cambridge resident had lived alone in the two-room apartment for the last six years. An active and popular member of the Cambridge Senior Center, she worked in the stockroom at Filene’s Basement in Natick until her retirement more than ten years ago, the Globe reported.

The two Harvard graduate students were traveling for the Thanksgiving holiday, according to Harvard spokesman Joe Wrinn. They are being housed temporarily in a local hotel, he said.

“Both have been offered new units and we hope to finalize those arrangements by tomorrow,” he wrote in an e-mail.

The fire travelled quickly through the wood frame building, facilitated by its hollow walls, Gialanis said. He added that the house collapsed when fire crews removed the second floor in an attempt to prevent the walls from caving in.

Harvard has not determined the extent of the damage, Wrinn said, and has not decided what it will do with the property.

The cold temperature—a frigid 12 degrees—also affected the operation, reported Gialanis. Two firemen were sent to Mt. Auburn hospital after slipping on the ice. The injuries were not life-threatening, but will put the firefighters out of commission for weeks.

Neighbors expressed shock at the tragedy.

“It was very cold that night,” said neighbor Martin Annis, an inventor who owns the Cambridge-based AnnisTech. “At the beginning of the fire it was sort of smoking and then later on it flared up. There must have been eight or 10 trucks there. Nobody dreamed there was anyone inside.”

Both the fire department and the University said the fire was unconnected to gas leaks that occurred earlier this week.