PRINCETON: Cigarette butt determined to be the cause of two-alarm fire at Witherspoon and Spring streets

By Lea Kahn, Staff Writer
A cigarette butt that was tossed into a plastic bucket has been pinpointed as the cause of a two-alarm fire Sunday afternoon that damaged a building on the corner of Witherspoon and Spring streets.
The fire was reported around 1 p.m., according to Bob Gregory, Princeton’s director of the Office of Emergency Management. No injuries were reported as a result of the fire, which officials said took about an hour to extinguish. Witherspoon Street was closed for about two hours.
The plastic bucket full of cigarette butts was on a set of steps on the Spring Street side of the building, Mr. Gregory said. Police officers pulled the bucket away from the building before the Princeton Fire Department and the Princeton First Aid and Rescue Squad arrived.
The fire, however, had burned through the plastic bucket and had set the floorboards on fire, Mr. Gregory said. The fire spread to the steps and the hallway. Firefighters knocked down the fire on the stairs and then went into the basement “to see what was going on,” he said.
Once firefighters were in the basement, they sprayed water on the floorboards to put out any fire, Mr. Gregory said. Firefighters also checked the upper story of the building, which contains three rental apartments, to make certain that the fire had not spread.
Firefighters from the Princeton Fire Department, as well as Lawrence Township, Montgomery Township, Rocky Hill Borough, South Brunswick Township and the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory responded to the fire.
The tenants in the apartments were displaced from the building, and the three businesses on the ground floor — the Village Silver, Sakura Express and More Café — were closed Monday. 