Two-Alarm Fire at North Broadway Building Injures One Person

Heavy fire blew through the ground floor of a three-story rowhouse at 1731 North Broadway Wednesday morning, sending one person to the hospital and forcing firefighters to shift to a defensive posture as flames spread laterally to adjoining homes in East Baltimore.

Crews were dispatched shortly after 10 a.m. on Wednesday, March 25, according to the Baltimore City Fire Department. When crews arrived on scene, they found heavy smoke on the ground floor of the building. The fire escalated to a two-alarm response as conditions inside the middle-of-group dwelling worsened, with smoke filling all three floors.

Chief James W. Wallace said the fire began at 1731 N. Broadway before it began to laterally spread to some adjacent homes. According to Wallace, three homes were impacted. Firefighting operations were complicated by what Wallace described as hazardous interior conditions. "We are trying to deal with hoarding conditions in the original fire building at this time. So what that does is that adds a degree of danger for us as we place large volumes of water into a structure that always has a lot of static weight," Wallace explained. As a result, crews were being methodical about how they worked the building, and one person suffered minor injuries and was taken to an area hospital. No firefighters were injured.

Officials said an occupant escaped one of the dwellings before running back inside. A possible entrapment was reported during the response, and one person was rescued as crews contained the fire. Whether the person who ran back inside and the individual transported to the hospital are the same has not been confirmed by the Baltimore City Fire Department.

The Red Cross was on scene helping displaced families as crews investigated the cause. One neighbor said they believe squatters caused the fire and described it as an ongoing problem in the area. How many residents were ultimately displaced remained unclear Wednesday afternoon.

The Broadway fire comes as the city's fire department has been working to drive down a years-long toll on residential blocks. One person was injured in the building fire in Northeast Baltimore on March 25, 2026, according to City Fire officials citing Chief Wallace. According to city fire department data, fatal fires in Baltimore City dropped by 50 percent in 2025, a reduction Chief Wallace attributed to weekly neighborhood sweeps focused on at-risk citizens. The first fire-related death in Baltimore this year came in January, when a 65-year-old man was killed in a rowhome fire in West Baltimore.

The cause of the North Broadway fire remains under investigation.