Seven people were injured early Sunday when a fire tore through a four-family apartment building on Catherine Street in Perth Amboy and spread into the structure next door. Firefighters were dispatched to 671 Catherine Street at approximately 12:45 a.m. and found heavy fire already burning at the rear of the building when they arrived.
The flames extended into the building immediately to the apartment building's right, according to Shore News Network, forcing crews to fight the blaze across two structures at once. Firefighters searched both buildings and conducted ventilation as they worked to get ahead of the spreading flames.
Four Hose Lines Needed to Knock Down the Flames
Crews ultimately deployed four hose lines to contain and extinguish the fire, the outlet reports. Despite the injuries, searches of both buildings turned up no occupants needing rescue, and fire officials said every occupant was accounted for once the flames were out. EMS personnel treated the seven injured people at the scene.
The response drew heavily on mutual aid from outside Perth Amboy. Firefighters from Hopelawn, Woodbridge, Fords, and Iselin assisted at the scene, while units from Perth Amboy, South Amboy, and Edison covered the rest of the city during the response, per the same account.
Cause Still Under Investigation
The Perth Amboy Fire Investigation Unit and the county fire marshal's office are now investigating what sparked the fire. No cause has been determined, and officials have not released the extent of the seven injuries or said whether anyone required hospitalization.
This is not the first serious apartment fire to hit Perth Amboy this year. A June 2026 fire in the city killed a child and injured five people, including two burn victims who were flown to a hospital for treatment, according to newjersey.news12.com. That blaze also injured two first responders and woke roughly 26 residents across six units, with officials crediting working smoke detectors for alerting people inside.
Perth Amboy has also seen multifamily fires turn destructive in years past. A three-alarm fire on Madison Avenue in May 2020 destroyed two neighboring multifamily homes and displaced about 30 residents, as reported by mycentraljersey.com. In that incident, no residents were hurt, though a fire captain suffered a minor injury that required treatment, and mutual-aid crews from Hopelawn, Keasbey, Melrose, Morgan, Fords, South Amboy, and Iselin helped battle the flames.
These earlier fires are separate incidents and are not presented as a cause or consequence of Sunday's blaze. Investigators have not released a timeline for determining the cause of the Catherine Street fire, and no information on property damage or displacement has been made public.
