Crew from Lawrence Township Among Firefighters from Four Counties Who Battled Hopewell Inferno

A crew from Lawrence Township’s Lawrenceville Volunteer Fire Co. was among the scores of firefighters from four counties who battled a raging two-alarm fire that destroyed a house in Hopewell Township Friday evening, March 4.

Hopewell Township Police Chief George Meyer said the blaze took place in the home of Steven and Heather Walters at 254 Lambertville-Hopewell Rd. (Route 518).

Meyer said Heather Walters’ mother, Bonnie Bray, was alone and asleep in the house when she was roused by a fire alarm that started to sound. Spotting smoke and flames in the kitchen area, she ran outside to safety, he said.

Alerted to the blaze at 8:55 p.m., Hopewell Township police officers arrived to find flames already burning through the roof of the home, Meyer said.

“Firefighters were unable to attack the fire from the interior due to the intensity of it when they arrived,” Meyer said. “They used tanker trucks to shuttle water to the scene from a pond on Route 31 at Route 654 (Pennington-Hopewell Road).”

All three Hopewell Valley fire companies – Hopewell Borough, Pennington Borough, and Union-Titusville – fought the blaze with the assistance of numerous other fire companies from Mercer, Hunterdon, Somerset and Bucks (Pa.) counties, including Lawrenceville, Pennington Road (Ewing Township), West Amwell and Lambertville.

Meyer said it took firefighters more than an hour to bring the blaze under control.

Ambulance crews from Hopewell and Pennington stood by on the scene but no injuries were reported, he said.

Meyer said the cause of the fire is thus-far undetermined and remains under investigation by township police, the Hopewell Valley Fire Marshal’s Office and the Mercer County Prosecutor’s Office.