One person was taken to a hospital and two were treated on scene when fire broke out at an apartment building at 9th Avenue and Washington Street about 9:45 Monday night.
All three injuries were related to smoke inhalation, not burns.
“The man was from an apartment next door — I guess he inhaled a lot of smoke and he got really scared,” said Anna Froelich, who was in her boyfriend’s apartment when the fire broke out, and saw the man taken to the hospital.
“He also said he had emphysema, so it was just a bad combination of shock and his health I think,” Froelich added.
About 42 firefighters responded to the apartment blaze. Firefighters found one unit on the third floor and one unit on the fourth floor were burned, and other units were damaged by smoke. There was also some damage to the roof.
Eric Tade, assistant chief for Denver Fire, said six units were considered uninhabitable. All the people in those units had somewhere to go for the night.
There are 50 units in the apartment building, and all the units were evacuated. Some people in the building said they were alerted by neighbors knocking on their doors.
“I came home from shopping and saw the smoke,” said David Newell, who lives on the third floor apartment next to the unit where the fire started.
“We opened the apartment’s door and it was just thick smoke,” Newell said. “I was calling in, but I guess no one was in there. It seems everyone was able to get out and grab their pets.”
Newell got out with his cat, Bailey.
Another resident, Olesea Ceres, who lives in an apartment under the unit where the fire started, said she heard people screaming and wasn’t sure if there was really a fire, because she didn’t hear the alarms.
“I was just watching TV, and I thought this was just a joke, but when they came around a second time, I came outside and saw the fire. It was so big,” Ceres said.
The apartment building has individual alarms in each unit as well as common alarms in the hallways. Tade said the alarms in the apartment building did sound but some were delayed until smoke reached them.
The cause of the fire remains under investigation.
