Massachusetts State House evacuated after fire, will remain closed Wednesday

BOSTON - The Massachusetts State House had to be evacuated Tuesday afternoon because of an electrical fire in the basement. The building will remain closed on Wednesday. 

Smoke spread to other parts of the building, and there were high readings of carbon monoxide. The fire was in a transformer room and crews had to wait for the utility company to cut power before they could put the fire out, police said.

Firefighters said a line feeding the transformer was on fire. Venting the building was time consuming and challenging.

"The smoke and the quality of the air was the problem," said Boston Fire Commissioner Paul Burke. "The toxins in that burning material were very dangerous. They have readings in the carbon monoxide, an average reading might be 10, 11 parts per million. This was in the thousands."

The Boston Fire Department responded at about 2 p.m. and Bowdoin, Beacon, Hancock and Dern streets were all closed to the public.

"I'm very pleased that no one was injured," said Senator Bruce Tarr. "That is the best thing that's happened today out of this entire thing. Our number one concern always has to be public safety."

Gov. Maura Healey and Lt. Gov. Kim Driscoll both left the building safely. 

An investigation is underway into the cause of the fire. The State House was closed for the rest of the day because of elevated carbon monoxide levels. The building will remain closed on Wednesday while the investigation continued "out of an abundance of caution."

Earlier Tuesday, lawmakers said, two people pulled the fire alarm. The building was briefly cleared, and everyone went back inside. When the second alarm went off, people didn't take it so seriously because of the morning's false alarm.

"We've been outside already today so when the second alarm went off, I didn't think it was real so we went outside and it was chaos from there," said page Megan Sheeran.