Blaze guts apartment complex

WASILLA — Fire destroyed most of a four-unit apartment building on Snohomish Avenue Wednesday, leaving seven people temporarily homeless.

The fire was reported at 10 a.m. Two residents barely made it out.

“They opened the door, the hallway was full of smoke and fire, from what I understand,” Central Mat-Su Fire Department Assistant Chief Michael Keenan said Thursday. He said the two people went from the door to a second-story window. “They were getting ready to jump and a neighbor came up with extension ladders.”

Multiple apparatuses, including a ladder truck and a so-called aerial platform with a basket for firefighters to stand in, worked to douse the fully engulfed building. Crews came from Palmer and West Lakes to help the Central teams.

Keenan said that he’d heard, but hadn’t been told officially, that two people living in the building received minor injuries. He said neither went to the hospital in a borough ambulance. A firefighter did, though, after falling through a charred floor.

“We call it a firefighter mayday, he called for help because he couldn’t get out and so it gets a little tense there before we figure out what’s going on,” Keenan said.

Luckily, he said, the firefighter was visible to his colleagues, who got him out.

“His partner turned around and he was missing,” Keenan said. “He walked back and found him and pulled him out real quick.”

Though the firefighter went to the hospital with the wind knocked out of him and bruising, Keenan said that as of Thursday afternoon he was back on duty and doing fine.

The fire was most intense in the units on the western side of the building, the street-facing façade of which was nothing but charred, black wood by the time the flames had been knocked down.

Keenan said both of those units and the upper apartment on the east side were rendered uninhabitable.

“The unit that had the least amount of damage was unoccupied,” Keenan said.

On scene Wednesday, Rich Boothby, with Central Mat-Su said, “Right now, we’re just trying to figure out how the fire started.”

As of Thursday, Keenan said that investigation includes assessing whether the building is partially salvageable or a total loss.

“My investigators are still working with the insurance company to figure out the damage,” Keenan said.

In addition to Keenan’s investigators, the Wasilla Police Department was working an investigation Wednesday as well. Officers were interviewing witnesses and people who lived in the building.

The American Red Cross also responded to provide vouchers for shelter and clothing to the displaced families.

A friend of two of the people who were displaced said in an email that a fund had been set up to help them at giveforward.com under the title “Ryan and Megan Fire Relief Fund.”

“The money generated from this will be used to help them start over by providing: furniture, clothing, kitchenware, children’s toys, clothing and furniture, linens, bathroom supplies, food, rent and deposit to get into a new place, and supplemental income to help them get through the time they are going to have to put in dealing with this event,” the site states.

Keenan said it was more difficult to fight than the fires his department usually faces.

“We’re a busy department, but we don’t get a lot of large unit apartment buildings like that,” he said. And, since it happened during the daytime, his department, which is made up mostly of people with day jobs, took some time to get a lot of people on scene. “Initially, it was a lot of work for just a few people, but we got it knocked down.”

It could have been much dicier, though. Keenan said initially they were told the upstairs west side unit had a mother and a baby inside.

“Yeah, I was getting ready to make the call to put ladders up,” Keenan said.

They were going to go room-by-room, entering through windows. But then they got word the woman and her baby were safe.

“Fortunately, we didn’t have to do that on this one,” he said.

The chief also put in a plug for smoke alarms.

“Smoke detectors woke up two of the occupants,” he said.

He also stressed the importance of having multiple ways out of your home.

“In both cases, folks’ primary way out was blocked by smoke they had to go out a window,” Keenan said.

Contact Andrew Wellner at 352-2270 or andrew.wellner@frontiersman.com.