From cigarettes to fireplace mishaps, Wake has seen 3 apartment fires in as many weeks
Fires at three Wake County apartment complexes in the past few weeks have displaced nearly 75 people, serving as a reminder that a neighbor’s discarded cigarette or careless thinking can have devastating consequences.
On Thursday evening, one person jumped and another was rescued after a fire broke out in a two-story building at the Arium Trailwood apartments in southwest Raleigh, according to fire officials.
The fire began because a resident had used gasoline in his fireplace, which “contributed to the fire spread,” according to an incident report from the Raleigh Fire Department. The blaze was unintentional.
The day before, on Wednesday evening, four pets were saved when a three-story building caught fire at the Camden Westwood Apartments in Morrisville, The News & Observer reported.
That fire started on a first-floor balcony and was accidental, but investigators have not determined the cause, said Scott Criddle, chief of the town’s fire department.
Together, the fires displaced 51 people, officials said.
On Feb. 13, a blaze at the Enclave at Crossroads apartment complex in west Raleigh affected 16 units and displaced 23 people, officials said. The fire was accidental and was caused by “smoking materials that were improperly discarded or extinguished,” Preston Gaster, chief fire investigator for Raleigh, said in an email.
“Wind conditions contributed to the spread of fire throughout the common attic space that did not have fire walls,” an incident report said.
Lemuel Hubbard, fire prevention coordinator for the Raleigh Fire Department, said improper cigarette disposal is one of the biggest issues impacting apartment complexes.
North Carolina has required sprinklers in apartments since 2006, but buildings constructed before then typically don’t have to use them. Landlords, including apartment complexes, are required by law to provide working smoke detectors, Taylor said.
Apartment buildings undergo annual inspections, he said, but fire officials only check common areas and breezeways, not individual units.
It’s important for apartment dwellers, and for everyone else, to regularly check that their smoke alarms are working properly, said Brian Taylor, chief state fire marshal.
Residents should also have an escape plan, he said. And he urged renters to encourage landlords to install stove-top fire suppressors, a fairly inexpensive method for preventing kitchen fires.
Meanwhile, he said, “You’ve got to be concerned about what your neighbor is doing.”
Residents of the Enclave apartments described a scary situation last month in which neighbors were pounding on doors to encourage everyone to get out. Jesse Vaughan, 22, said he was in the shower in his second-floor apartment when he heard a noise.
“I thought someone had left a package,” he said the day of the fire. “I kept going on, got out and put my clothes on, and someone came to the door and yelled, ‘Fire!’”
The Enclave and Arium buildings had smoke detectors but no sprinklers, according to Gaster.
“An important note about smoke detectors is that the fire has to start inside,” Gaster wrote. “A fire that starts outside of a building can do a lot of damage and spread undetected before the occupants inside are alerted. “
In Morrisville, Criddle said the apartment that caught fire didn’t have sprinklers on porch areas.
“It’s hard to say, but sprinklers on the porch would certainly have reduced the damage of that fire,” he said.
No one was injured in any of the fires.
All three buildings were made of wood and had vinyl siding, fire officials said.
“Building materials can be factors that cause spread in any fire, but it also has to do with several other things, such as weather and what is actually on fire,” Gaster wrote.
The safety of wood construction came into question in March 2017, when an under-construction apartment building in downtown Raleigh caught fire. Investigators have not determined what sparked the massive blaze at The Metropolitan at Jones and Harrington streets.
Some firefighting groups have voiced concerns about multi-family wood buildings, The N&O reported in 2017. When such structures catch fire, they said, a blaze can spread quickly.
It’s expensive to build multi-family units with non-combustible materials, Taylor said, so wooden structures “are not going away.”
“The key to it is to make them as safe as possible,” he said.
This story was originally published March 8, 2019 at 1:45 PM.
