No one was injured when a bathroom scale in the St. Francis of Assisi Cathedral rectory caught on fire Nov. 5.
“We heard the fire trucks,” said Kim Paltz, a fourth-grader at the St. Francis Cathedral School, 528 Main St. in Metuchen. “I heard the fire trucks from my classroom and it smelled like smoke. A friend told me there was a fire in the rectory. We were scared for the monsignor, afraid somebody got hurt.”
She added, “Lots of kids were talking about it and still talking about it [Nov. 6].”
The fire was discovered just after 11:30 a.m. Firefighters evacuated the building, at 32 Elm Ave., for a little more than an hour to make sure there were no injuries and that the fire was under control.
The housekeeper at St. Francis went upstairs to get laundry and saw smoke billowing, said Rosemarie Gazaleh, office manager and executive assistant at the cathedral. The insurance company was out examining the damage on Nov. 5, but Gazaleh said it seemed to be mainly smoke and soot damage in the bathroom and a neighboring bedroom.
“There was minimal damage, and no one was hurt,” she said. “We’re very grateful for that. … It’s a good thing the housekeeper acted quickly, and that she went up there. She came down and yelled for help.”
Officials said the fire was started by an electronic digital scale.
“It’s still baffling. It wasn’t plugged in, it ran on batteries,” Gazaleh said.
Contact Enid Weiss at [email protected].