A Lynn man on his way to pick up his daughter notified a woman living in a first floor of a two-story apartment building on Lynnfield Street Monday that the upper floor was on fire, allowing her to get out of the building in enough time to prevent her from being hurt.

Ethel Mulloy said she was sipping a cup of coffee in her first-floor apartment, unaware of the fire above her when the man, Jamal Saleh, from the street came knocking at her door to alert her of the danger upstairs.  

He said he noticed the fire coming from the building and quickly pulled his car over and sprang into action. 

“All of a sudden we saw smoke and we thought it was just a fireplace thing and literally that window you could see where the fire started, it was just all flames of smoke,” Saleh said. “I ended up just pulling in here running inside, banging on her door.”

“He banged on the door and said get out of there it’s a fire,” Mulloy said. “The firemen got my cat out because he was still in the house, my husband got out, everybody got out safe I don’t care about anything else.”

Lynn firefighters responded to the two-alarm fire Monday afternoon and were able to knock the fire down, Lynn Fire Chief Dan Sullivan said. 

The call of a building fire came in at 2 p.m. When crews arrived, they found heavy fire and smoke coming from the second floor.

When the first crew arrived they made entry and knocked the fire down in a second floor room, Sullivan said. They found smoke in the attic. The smoke detectors were active when authorities arrived on the scene, the fire chief said. No one was home on the second floor at the time of the fire. 

“I’d like to thank the Lynn Police for giving us a great report prior to our arrival so our guys knew what they had coming into this,” Sullivan said.

There were two people at home on the first floor at the time of the fire, Sullivan said.

A beauty salon that shares the same building but on the opposite side, was not impacted by the fire. There are no reported injuries and the fire is currently under investigation.