A blaze Thursday night in an apartment house at 327 Rural St. started in a kitchen, firefighters said this morning.
No one was injured, but it took firefighters about an hour and a half to extinguish the fire. Firefighters checking in with fire captain Larry Bess said it was difficult chasing everything down.
“You knock one end (of the fire) down and you see it at the other end smoking,” firefighter Jamey Pettigrew told Bess.
Firefighters arrived about 6:30 p.m. to find police already there and fire burning from the top to the bottom of the west wall of the building. The residents of the four apartments in the building had gotten out and were waiting across the street.
“In another 10 minutes, we would have really been chasing it,” said Bess, who was the scene commander.
According to the department, the fire began in the kitchen of apartment No. 1 and spread to the outside after a failed attempt by tenants to extinguish it.
Edward Murphy, who lived in apartment No. 1, said he had been settling down with family to watch a movie on TV when smoke started to pour out of the kitchen.
“It happened all of a sudden. It just flared up,” Murphy said. “All of a sudden, we saw there was a cloud billowing up and we knew we needed to get the hell out of there.”
In addition to knocking down the fire, firefighters had to re-enter the building several times to get medicine belonging to the residents.
“I’m beginning to think there’s nothing in this house but drugs!” joked one firefighter after yet another trip.
No one was hurt in the fire. Bess said that damage to the building included the back of the building along the first and second floor and smoke damage in the back of apartment No. 1.
The building is owned by Gilbert Louk.