No one was injured in a Sunday afternoon kitchen fire that aused an estimated $3,300 in damage at the Regency West Apartments in the 2300 block of Loni Lane.

At 2:45 p.m. Sunday, the Racine Fire Department was dispatched to a report of a fire in an upper apartment at 2328 Loni Lane, west of Highway 31, according to a Fire Department news release. Occupants were standing safely outside when firefighters arrived.

After arriving on scene, firefighters found an automatic fire sprinkler system spraying water from a single sprinkler head into the kitchen at the apartment, where a fire started on the stove top and had spread to the cabinets before the sprinkler system activated. A smoke alarm was sounding in the apartment.

Instead of battling what would most likely have been a fully involved apartment fire, firefighters had to merely turn off the main water control to the fire sprinkler system to stop further damage, Fire Department officials said.

The Red Cross was contacted to assist the four people in two apartments who were displaced due to the fire.

The tenants are expected to be able to return to their apartments within a few days.

The Fire Department said that lessons learned from the incident were:

• Fire sprinklers likely saved tenants and an apartment building from a catastrophic fire loss.
• Tenants involved in this fire did not have renter’s insurance, which would have helped protect them from the thousands of dollars of financial loss. Renter’s insurance also helps protect tenants from actions of neighbors, fire officials advised.