An early Thanksgiving apartment fire left 14-year-old Cathy Richardson anxious and worried about the fate of her three cats instead of savoring a turkey dinner.
By midday, though, she had rescued all three from underneath a bed and found her family’s belongings only minimally damaged by smoke.
Still, she and 30 other residents at an apartment building in the 2200 block of Eliot Circle in Westminster were displaced by the blaze.
Five people were transported to a hospital for treatment, including an infant and an 11-year-old, but no one suffered serious injuries, said Westminster Deputy Fire Marshal Doug Hall.
The other residents were transported by the American Red Cross Mile High Chapter from the apartment building to a nearby senior citizen center, and then eventually dispersed to relatives and friends.
The Westminster Fire Department received a call about the fire at 3:44 a.m.
The fire originated in a bedroom of one of the first-story apartments in the building, Hall said. The fire spread to a second-floor unit and damaged adjacent units. The rest of the units in the 24-unit building had smoke damage, he said.
Hall said the damage was so extensive that the residents will have to find new homes.
Of the five people taken to a hospital, four needed treatment for smoke inhalation, Hall said. A fifth individual had a back injury, sustained while slipping during an escape from the fire.
Richardson said the fire alarm jolted her from the fun of playing a video computer game. She said she at first thought the fire alarm was a joke until her brother alerted her that it was real.
The children woke up their mother, Dee Richardson, who is struggling to recover from kidney disease and is undergoing dialysis.
After returning to their smoke-damaged apartment after the fire had been extinguished, the family finally found the cats hiding under a bed.
“I couldn’t believe it was happening,” Dee Richardson said, stressing that her disability checks will be stretched thin now for the coming Christmas season.
She said that once she had escaped, she looked back at the initial location of the building’s blaze and saw a scene “like an inferno.”
“It was just a nightmare,” she said.
She said she was lucky that she had already planned to spend her Thanksgiving elsewhere with friends and family.
More importantly, the cats, including Cathy’s favorite, T.C., for Tabby Cat, were safe and sound.
Staff writer Christopher N. Osher can be reached at 303-954-1747 or cosher@denverpost.com.
