JIM WOODS
The Columbus Dispatch

Two firefighters were injured when portions of a stairwell collapsed while they were battling a fire inside an East Side town home yesterday evening.


A Columbus firefighter was taken to Grant Medical Center to be treated for leg and hip injuries. A Whitehall Fire Department lieutenant was treated at the scene and declined to go the hospital.

Columbus and Whitehall firefighters responded at 6 p.m. to the report of a fire at 3482 Cunard Square, in the Cushing Arms Townhomes.

According to Columbus Fire Division Battalion Chief Michael Fowler, a group of Whitehall firefighters went up the stairs, and one Whitehall lieutenant fell through a hole in the stairway.

Shortly after, the Columbus firefighter coming up the same staircase was more seriously injured when the staircase collapsed into the town house's basement.

Fowler said that firefighter's injuries weren't life-threatening. The firefighters' names weren't released late last night.

The fire was extinguished within an hour, damaging the town house where it started and three other town homes.

Authorities haven't determined how the blaze started.

No one else was injured.

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May 5, 2011