BOSTON --
MBTA service and traffic was expected to be back to normal Wednesday morning around the Longfellow Bridge after a fire broke out Tuesday night on the span that connects Boston to Cambridge.
NewsCenter 5's Gail Huff reported that the fire broke out in a crawl space under the bridge and fire officials blamed the blaze on careless disposal of a cigarette.
"The smoke was going that way through the bridge. I got nervous when I saw that, because you never really know what happened there," one man said.
"There was so much smoke coming at the station, we didn't realize it was underneath," Boston Deputy Fire Chief Steve Dunbar said. "It seems like some homeless people had some accumulation of mattresses and trash in there, but it did involve some electrical wiring also."
The electrical wiring feeds power to the MBTA Red line trains. About 425 commuters were evacuated from trains on or near the bridge.
"Once we got off the train, we could smell it," one passenger said.
Passengers were stranded on the tracks for about an hour.
"They kept giving us announcements every 10 minutes or so that they had no idea what was going on," another passenger said.
It was awhile before they figured out where the smoke was coming from. The Charles Street MGH station was closed.
Engineers were checking for structural soundness following the fire.
"This is a very old structure and I'm going to be very careful about saying it's safe. I'd rather have the engineers check it out," Dunbar said.
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