Carson City firefighters battled a fully-engulfed blaze at an apartment complex early Tuesday morning that forced the evacuation of several residents.
The fire, reported at around 1:30 a.m., was at the Comstock Apartments, 1215 East Fifth Street near the corner of Parkland in Carson City. It began in a lower unit and spread to nearby apartments on the ground and top floor and into the attic. There were no reported injuries to any of the apartment tenants though one declined treatment for smoke inhalation, said Carson City Fire Chief Stacey Giomi. No firefighters were hurt.
There are a total of six units that make up the building. Of the four occupied units in the section that burned, two of them had fire damage and one unoccupied unit had fire damage, Giomi said. All the units in the building that burned are without power because flames had caused arcing of the power lines, the fire chief said.
Red Cross was called to take care of those who were either burned out of their apartment or forced to evacuate. A family of four was being helped by Red Cross and the occupant of the apartment that caught fire said she was going to stay with family. A 70-year-old man said he was either going to stay with a member of his church or get help from the Red Cross.
The occupant of the apartment that is believed be the point of origin for the fire told Carson Now that it began when a cigarette fell to the floor and ignited her oxygen tube.
"I saw what happened and I tried to put it out but it went really fast," said Susan Woods, who lives in the apartment. She said she ran out of her unit and began to scream for help. Others in the complex heard her calls for help, including Bill Woodward, who lives directly above Woods.
He said he was in bed asleep and heard the woman yell "Help me." He said he smelled smoke, heard a loud noise, walked over to the window, opened the shade and saw flames coming up from the bottom to the top of his unit.
"I grabbed my robe and got out of there," said Woodward.
Nearby tenant Cheryl Perryman said she went to the balcony and saw flames. "It was surreal. Terrifying. The flames just kept jumping out. And then as soon as the firefighters got here and put water on it, the flames were gone."
Danny Paul who lives nearby said he was outside at the time smoking a cigarette when he noticed smoke billowing out of one of the units. Paul said he heard a neighbor calling 911 for help and "then it just blew up. There was a loud popping noise, like fireworks." That's when he and others went and knocked on doors to get people alerted to get out of the apartments.
Giomi said that he had not had a chance to speak with the fire investigator and couldn't comment yet on the origin of the fire. He noted there has been at least two fatalities in the past 10 years that happened because of smokers having oxygen tanks with hoses that ignited.
"Smoking and oxygen don't mix well," he said.