Residents escaped uninjured from a fire at the Lovelander Hotel Apartments on Monday night after an evaporative cooler on the building’s north side caught fire.
The fire in the historic three-story building at 111 E. Fourth St. started around 10 p.m. between the building’s first and second floors, according to an email sent Tuesday morning by Loveland Fire Rescue Authority division chief and fire marshal Ned Sparks.
About 45 to 50 residents were either asleep or getting ready to go to bed, according to Sparks and the building’s owner, Astrid, who goes by one name. Fire Chief Mark Miller said no residents or firefighters were harmed.
Those residents have been displaced and won’t be able to return for one or two days, said Astrid, who was working through the channels to get electricity restored and have the building declared inhabitable again.
Sparks and Astrid said the fire sprinkler system that she had installed four months ago in the 40-apartment building saved many lives.
“I am convinced this fire would have had a huge loss of life and most likely the building would have been lost (quite probable the Elks Club and Cactus Grille too),” Sparks said in his email.
“Seeing firsthand how many of the people survived who would have perished in a catastrophic fire, I am reminded why we do what we do,” Sparks said.
In recent years, the Loveland Fire Rescue Authority has worked with the owners of the Lovelander and two other historic buildings downtown to have sprinkler systems installed.
Historic buildings are quick to burn, and the fires are difficult to fight once they start, Sparks said.
“Once it got going, we couldn’t have stopped it,” Sparks said. “The interstitial space in this area is massive and had the fire not been suppressed would have run through this space unchecked.”
But because of the sprinklers, the fire never really took off.
Two residents who saw the fire and helped evacuate their neighbors said a swamp cooler, which wasn’t running, caught fire.
“I was just about to go to bed when I smelled something funny,” said Jamie Bridgeman, the resident manager who lives on the second floor directly above the cooler with her husband. “Then I started seeing smoke.”
“One of my residents had gotten off work and pulled up behind the building. She started screaming ‘fire!’ I looked out my window, and my swamp cooler was engulfed in flames,” said Bridgeman, who said her hair was singed by the fire. “I just started screaming ‘fire’ and came down here and pulled the alarm.
“Then I went back up and stood in the middle and screamed, ‘Fire! Everybody get out,” she said.
Two residents got fire extinguishers from the hallway and stood outside the building, spraying onto the fire, she said.
Steve Dupont, a resident of the first floor, said most residents used the metal fire escapes on the back side of the building.
“Everybody was coming out like they were supposed to,” he said.
On Tuesday afternoon, he was standing outside the Lovelander, waiting to go inside to help retrieve the belongings of a friend whose nearby apartment was damaged by a sprinkler head that activated. Astrid said the ceiling fell in that apartment because of the water damage.
Astrid was busy on the phone Tuesday, talking with an electrical contractor about getting the power restored. He told her that she would need an engineer to verify that the structure still was sound, even though she said the fire was mostly confined to the exterior cooler unit.
“Let’s get this underway right now,” she said.
Astrid expressed concern for her residents, whom she described as normally just a few hundred dollars away from homelessness — the working poor, elderly people and students.
“We really could use a little help,” she said, breaking down in tears under her coronavirus face mask when asked what kind of help.
“They’re all law-abiding, very decent citizens of Loveland,” she said. “I wish they could come back this afternoon, but it sounds like 24 to 48 hours.”
Bridgeman, the manager, said Sparks gave residents vouchers for motel rooms Monday night, and eight people were able to take rooms. The rest, such as herself and her husband, either stayed with friends or paid for motel rooms themselves, although they couldn’t really afford it.
Bridgeman said she had been talking with the American Red Cross about getting more vouchers to house the displaced residents until they could move back in.
Astrid was busy on the phone Tuesday, talking with an electrical contractor about getting the power restored. He told her that she would need an engineer to verify that the structure still was sound, even though she said the fire was mostly confined to the exterior cooler unit.
“Let’s get this underway right now,” she said.
Astrid expressed concern for her residents, whom she described as normally just a few hundred dollars away from homelessness — the working poor, elderly people and students.
“We really could use a little help,” she said, breaking down in tears under her coronavirus face mask when asked what kind of help.
“They’re all law-abiding, very decent citizens of Loveland,” she said. “I wish they could come back this afternoon, but it sounds like 24 to 48 hours.”
Bridgeman, the manager, said Sparks gave residents vouchers for motel rooms Monday night, and eight people were able to take rooms. The rest, such as herself and her husband, either stayed with friends or paid for motel rooms themselves, although they couldn’t really afford it.
Bridgeman said she had been talking with the American Red Cross about getting more vouchers to house the displaced residents until they could move back in.
