Copyright 2006 The Columbus Dispatch
All Rights Reserved
By THEODORE DECKER
The Columbus Dispatch (Ohio)
Joshua Smith rushed onto his apartment balcony, looked right and saw the north half of his building in flames. Then he looked left and saw the south half enveloped in smoke.
He and his family were in the middle.
He ran inside for his sleeping fiancee, 5-month-old son and dog.
“Baby!” he said he screamed. “We got a fire. Get up now!”
Smith and his family were among about 40 tenants left homeless yesterday morning when fire ripped through an 18-unit building at 5745 Roche Dr., in the Reflections on the Lake complex near I-71 and Rt. 161.
Although about 20 tenants were home when fire broke out, no one was hurt in the 11:30 a.m. blaze that caused about $1.25 million in damage, fire officials said.
About 110 firefighters spent nearly 90 minutes fighting the fire, which sent a plume of smoke into the sky thick and high enough to slow traffic on I-71. Some suburban fire crews assisted Columbus firefighters.
Investigators said the fire started in a first-floor bedroom, but they still were trying to determine the cause yesterday afternoon.
Columbus Battalion Chief Doug Smith said the blaze tore through the building’s shared attic, allowing the flames to spread from end to end before firefighters could reach them.
Crews had climbed to the roof and sliced a gash between the eaves, hoping to vent the flames, halt their march through the building and meet them head-on.
They were too late.
“The fire had already passed us,” Smith said. “It was a very fast-moving fire.” Although new construction requires fire walls, the complex was built in the 1970s and did not have fire walls extending into the attic.
“It sure would have helped today,” Smith said.
Realizing the flames had raced under the crews, commanders pulled everyone off the roof and out of the building, forcing them onto the defensive by pouring water on the flames only from the outside.
Complex managers said they were trying to track down all the affected tenants. They said they hoped to put them up in other apartments in the complex.
Smith, 25, fear that he and his fiancee, 24-year-old Amanda Crevison, lost everything.
Crevison works as a nursing assistant while Smith stays home with their son, Kamari, and occasionally cleans floors with a janitorial service.
As the building burned, the couple kept Kamari cool with a water bottle in the parking lot and waited for relatives to come for them. Their Labrador-boxer mix, King, cowered on the back floor of their sport-utility vehicle.
They had lived at the complex only two months and had no renter’s insurance.
“We was struggling already, and now this,” Smith said. “It’s even worse. We don’t have a home.”