One apartment was destroyed and another was damaged in a fire in the Verda Vista apartment complex, 5312 Old Hwy. 21 in Otto on Jan. 3.
At 9:40 p.m., a woman who lives in the apartment that was destroyed noticed the fire and called 911, after removing her daughter and cat from the residence. She told the dispatcher there was a fire in the furnace room of the apartment, and when Antonia firefighters arrived on the scene, they found the inside of the apartment on fire and the blaze already spreading to a vacant apartment next door, said Fire Marshal Glenn Nivens of the Antonia Fire Protection District.
Those two apartments were among 12 in the apartment building. Six of the apartments, however, were separated by a concrete firewall, Nivens said.
“We evacuated six of the apartments, about 10 people,” he said.
Firefighters worked quickly to extinguish the blaze.
“The fire got up into the attic and we had to pull the ceiling,” Nivens said.
Firefighters poured about 250 gallons of water on the fire to make sure that it was out, he said.
One firefighter who was carrying a ladder slipped on the ice, and was sore the next morning, but apparently didn’t suffer any significant injury, Nivens said.
The one-bedroom apartment where the woman lived was a “total loss,” he said. “It’s going to have to be gutted and start from scratch.”
The apartment next door was damaged in the fire, and “the back four apartments got some smoke,” Nivens said.
The fire is still under investigation.
“We agree that the fire came from the (destroyed apartment’s) furnace room, but we’re not sure of the ignition source that caused the fire,” Nivens said.
Firefighters were on the scene until 1 a.m. Jan. 4.
The woman and her 9-year-old daughter were put up for the night in another apartment in the complex where a family member lived. The apartment owner planned to relocate the family into another apartment, Nivens said.
“The American Red Cross met up with her the next morning. She had lost all her furniture and she had no insurance,” Nivens added.
The Mehlville, High Ridge, Mapaville, Saline Valley, Goldman and Rock Community fire protection districts assisted with the call.