FORT COLLINS, Colo.—Firefighters in Fort Collins are investigating a fire early Monday that destroyed a condominium building under construction and heavily damaged a neighboring building that also contains condos.
The fire was reported just after 3:30 a.m. in a four-story condo building being built downtown.
The fire destroyed that wooden building, which hadn’t been covered by sheetrock yet, and spread to the Penny Flats building next door, which has businesses on the ground floor and condos upstairs. Fire Capt. Patrick Love said the occupied building’s sprinkler system helped suppress the fire enough so that residents were able to evacuate.
No one was injured.
The top floor and roof of that building was damaged by the fire and smoke and the lower floors suffered heavy water damage. Debris from the buildings littered the streets near the buildings.
Penny Flats resident Suzanne Akin, 30, told the Coloradoan ( ) that she awoke to the sound of something metallic hitting the building. At first, she mistook it for hail. She said she then looked out and saw a “wall of fire” across the alleyway from her building.
“All you could see was orange,” said Akin, who escaped with her boyfriend and two dogs.
Firefighters eventually had to fight the blaze from the outside because of fears the building’s roof could collapse. Love said they poured about 4,000 gallons of water a minute on the fire.
