Category Archives: Apartment Building

Apartment Building, Residential

Rochester, MN – Salvation Army apartment fire put out by fire sprinklers; No injuries reported

A small fire at the Salvation Army Castleview Residence at 120 N. Broadway Avenue Tuesday morning forced residents to evacuate and created a mess, according to a firefighter on the scene.

Firefighters arrived on the scene at about 9:30 a.m. and found smoke and water on the fourth floor. They found the source of the smoke in a fourth-floor apartment where the sprinkler system extinguished a fire but flooded several neighboring units in the building.

Fire crews shut off the sprinkler, ventilated the fourth floor and spent about an hour on scene clearing water from the fourth floor.

The smoke and fire damage was limited to the fourth-floor apartment but the first through fourth floors sustained water damage.

No one was injured in the incident and no damage estimate was released.

Apartment Building, Residential

Fayetteville, NC – Fire at apartment complex controlled by fire sprinkler system; No injuries reported

Cheryl Spence didn’t know what to think when she heard a loud boom noise “like a cannonball” on Thursday afternoon as thunderstorms were moving through, then saw smoke coming from a light fixture in her kitchen.

Before she knew it, her apartment on the first floor of Regency Apartments at 505 Regency Drive off Cliffdale Road was engulfed in smoke.

“It scared the dickens out of me,” Spence said. “I had gone in the kitchen to warm me up something to eat. I looked up and saw the smoke coming out of the light fixture. It kept getting thicker and thicker. The firm alarm was going off, too, out there.”

She was among six residents living in four, first- and second-floor units in the complex off Cliffdale Road who were displaced after fires damaged four units.

“We gave them some funds for food and clothing because they needed to replace their clothing,” said Lori Nieves, a disaster team coordinator for the Red Cross.

Nieves said the apartment complex was not the only building damaged by lightning from Thursday’s storm. She said a family who lives in a home on Jenna Shane Drive in Fayetteville also were put up for the night by the Red Cross after their home was damaged by a lightning strike.

Spence and other residents and the manager of the complex say they are convinced that a lightning strike from a passing thunderstorm was the culprit.

“I guess the lightning or whatever (caused the fire),” she said. “The bedroom was damaged. The kitchen was damaged. They had to tear the ceilings out. The outside of the building had some damage where they had to take the vinyl siding off.”

Jamie Everitte, Fire and Life Safety Education officer with the Fayetteville Fire Department, said there were no injuries in the fire, and the official cause of the fires at the complex has not yet been listed. “The investigation is still ongoing,” he said.

He said six people were displaced. The dollar amount of the damage to the units has also hasn’t yet been determined, he said.

″(The units) were damaged by water from sprinkler heads and by smoke, so they are probably not all ready,” he said.

The Fayetteville Fire and Emergency Management Units responded to Regency Apartments on Regency Drive at 5:20 p.m. on Thursday.

The first unit reported smoke in several areas, and firefighters discovered smoke coming from between the first and second floors.

Residents were evacuated as emergency personnel began fighting the fire. A second fire was located in the laundry area of a separate apartment. That fire was controlled by the sprinkler system The Fayetteville Public Works Commission was asked to disconnect power to the units, and the fire was under control by 6:24 p.m.

Spence said she is grateful to the Red Cross for paying for three nights in hotel room for her, as well as food and clothing.

The apartment complex requires renter’s insurance, Spence said, which will be paying for a place for her to stay for several weeks while her unit is being repaired from the fire damage.

Angela Raupp, the manager of the complex, said she is also convinced that lightning cause the fires.

“That’s what we believe,” she said. ”(Spence) is not the only one who told me there was loud thunder before the fire started.”

She said in her 17 years of managing apartments she has never seen a fire caused by lightning damage an apartment building.

“We require residents get insurance in the event of something like this happening,” she said. “Thankfully, everybody was OK. Thankfully, this insurance requirement makes this a little easier on the residents.”

Apartment Building, Residential

McKinney, TX – Apartment fire stopped from spreading by fire sprinkler activation

The McKinney Fire Department (MFD) reports that an apartment fire was stopped by the home fire sprinkler system on Saturday, June 29. MFD received a call about smoke at the Reserve at Stonebridge Ranch Apartments, 2305 Custer Rd. Units arrived to find that fire sprinklers had stopped the fire from spreading beyond the kitchen area. No one was home when the fire broke out. 

“Fire sprinklers have been around for more than a century in public and commercial buildings,” said McKinney Fire Marshal Mike Smith. “That same lifesaving technology is just as effective when it comes to protecting your home.” 

The NFPA reports that unattended cooking is a factor in one-third of home cooking fires and half of the associated deaths. 

Apartment Building, Residential

Oklahoma City, OK – Fire sprinkler activation keeps apartment fire under control

Oklahoma City firefighters are crediting a sprinkler system for helping keep an apartment fire under control.

Just after 12 p.m. on Monday, firefighters were called to the Lake Hefner Townhomes, near Rockwell and Britton.

Firefighters say the flames triggered the sprinkler system, which knocked down most of the fire. Officials say four units were damaged during the fire, but those units were having electrical work done when the fire started.

Officials say one person was being treated for breathing issues.

Apartment Building, Residential

Birmingham, AL – Sprinkler system extinguishes fire in hallway of apartment community; No injuries reported

A call came out at 2:30 a.m. of a fire on the 2300 block of 5th Avenue North. According to Birmingham Fire and Rescue, there was a small fire in the hallway on the 15th floor of Bankhead Towers. The sprinkler system was able to put out the fire.

The hallway sustained minor fire and water damage. Firefighters are cleaning up water. No residents were displaced and no one was injured.

The fire is under investigation.

Apartment Building, Residential

Raleigh, NC – Fire on 22nd floor of high-rise apartment extinguished by fire sprinklers, contained to single unit

A fire at a downtown Raleigh high-rise Wednesday morning evacuated a number of people and resulted in damage to one unit, officials said.

A call regarding a fire on the 22nd floor of the SkyHouse Raleigh apartment building located at 308 S. Blount St. came in at 12:37 a.m.

According to authorities, a fire broke out on the balcony of a 22nd-floor unit and the fire was hot enough to activate the sprinklers in that unit. The fire was extinguished by the sprinkler system.

There was minimal fire damage to the unit, but it did sustain water damage.

Apartments built after 2002 are required to have sprinkler systems.

Multiple people were evacuated while crews were handling the fire. Everyone was allowed back to their units except for the peron whose apartment was damaged.

Officials said they’re not sure what started the fire, but a Raleigh Fire Department incident report lists the fire’s cause as “accidental.”

The person who lived in the apartment refused treatment for injuries, according to the report.

Apartment Building, Residential

Palatine, IL – Apartment kitchen fire extinguished by single fire sprinkler; No injuries reported

An apartment’s kitchen caught fire in Palatine Monday, officials said.

Fire crews responded at approximately 12:07 p.m. to an activated fire alarm in an apartment building at 759 E. Pennsylavania Drive, according to a news release from the Palatine Fire Department.

After firefighters arrived on the scene, the resident said there was a kitchen fire in the unit that had been extinguished by the building’s sprinkler system, the release said. Crews went up to the third-floor apartment and confirmed that the sprinkler system had extinguished the fire and limited damage to the kitchen.

The fire department declared the fire under control at 12:16 p.m. and continued to salvage, overhaul and investigate afterward, according to the release.

Nobody was injured in the fire and its cause was ruled accidental in nature. Damage estimates weren’t available at the time of the release.

Apartment Building, Residential

Brockton, MA – Single sprinkler extinguishes fire at high rise building

A sprinkler system helped avert potential widespread damage Friday night by quickly extinguishing a fire.

Engine 2, Engine 4 and Ladder 2 of the Brockton Fire Department, along with a deputy chief, responded to the Campello High Rise, a Brockton Housing Authority property at 1380 Main St., about 8:57 p.m. The department had received a box alarm for the building.

There was no smoke coming from the building when firefighters arrived, but they quickly learned sprinklers had activated on the second floor. They determined there was a fire in the trash chute.

“Last evening, a fire in a trash chute was extinguished by a sprinkler at a 10-story high rise building,” the Brockton Fire Department wrote in a tweet on Saturday morning.