By Laura Snider
The Daily Camera
BOULDER, Colo. — The Boulder Fire Department responded to and put out an overnight fire at a duplex on Arapahoe Avenue that left three adults hospitalized, including one who was airlifted to Denver with suffered severe burns.
Dispatch received multiple 911 calls around 3:12 a.m. — some of which may have come from some of the five people living in the duplex — reporting the fire at 410 Arapahoe Ave., which is attached to 408 Arapahoe Ave., according to fire department spokeswoman Kim Kobel.
By the time firefighters arrived, flames were shooting out windows and doors, engulfing the front porch and burning several trees in the yard, and all five residents already had evacuated on their own — some by crawling out windows, Kobel said.
One of the residents suffered serious burns and was airlifted to a hospital in Denver, and two others suffered from smoke inhalation and were taken to Boulder Community Hospital, Kobel said.
None of the residents’ names have been released, but a neighbor said she believes all were in their 20s.
About 25 firefighters fought the blaze, which was put out by about 5 a.m. Kathy Freudenstein — who lives in the house next door, fewer than 20 feet from the duplex — said she was woken up by a neighbor pounding on her back door.
Freudenstein looked out her window and saw 15-foot flames.
“I said, ‘Whoa, we need to get out of here,’” she said.
Freudenstein, her husband and her granddaughter were all able to get out safely, but the heat from the fire cracked the glass in a storm window on the second floor.
Joanna Seiler, who lives across the street and down the block from the duplex, which was built in 1910, said she woke up about 3 a.m. when she smelled smoke.
“In this neighborhood — after the fires last summer — if you smell smoke, you don’t go back to sleep,” she said.
Firefighters don’t know yet what caused the blaze, but investigators will be working throughout the day at the property, which is owned by Min-Yen and Su-Yu Chang Wu, who live in Broomfield, according to the Boulder County Assessor’s Office.
Much of the inside of the duplex was severely burned, and the porch was so badly charred that it buckled and dissolved.
The damage, which includes a collapsed ceiling, makes it difficult to tell if the house had smoke detectors, Kobel said.
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