OAKLAND — One resident was injured and dozens of other residents were displaced in a three-alarm fire Saturday morning at a downtown apartment complex, officials said.
The person injured, who was hospitalized with smoke inhalation, was one of eight residents rescued off balconies by firefighters.
The fire erupted just after 5 a.m. at the Alice Lake apartments, 1553 Alice St., a three-story building that has 96 units, officials said.
The fire started in a second-floor apartment on the 17th Street side of the building, apparently in the kitchen, said fire Battalion Chief Anthony Sanders.
Most of the residents were able to get out on their own, but eight had to be rescued off balconies by firefighters who used ladders to get to them. No firefighters were injured.
One of those rescued was Caitlin Reynolds, a second-floor resident who has lived in the building on the Alice Street side for more than two years.
Reynolds, a nurse, said she was awakened by a fire alarm going off in the hallway and when she looked out her peephole she “saw people running down the hallway with sweatshirts covering their mouths and noses.
“I opened the door a crack and I could see smoke coming from the stairwell area. I was scared when I saw the smoke. It was terrible.”
She called her best friend who lives across the hallway from her and woke her up. “I told her, ‘Wake up the building is on fire.’ She came over to my apartment and we climbed onto the balcony and I was yelling to firefighters, ‘Up here, help get us out.'” After firefighters got her off the balcony she said she was extremely relieved. “I was just really ecstatic.”
Kashif Asaad, 29, another second-floor resident, was woken up by a housemate and yelling about a fire, and scrambled to get dressed. But he and his housemate could not get out the front door, and found themselves on their balcony to escape the smoke, contemplating whether to jump to the ground below.
Fortunately, moments later firefighters arrived with ladders to help them get to safety, Asaad said.
But Asaad said the thick, hot smoke forced him to leave behind his pet of five years, a coral glow ball python named Versace, which lives in a 40-gallon tank in his living room.
“I tried to grab my snake, but it was so smoky, I couldn’t stand even a second in that,” he said.
After the fire was put out, he and his family were able to briefly return to his apartment to gather essentials and bring Versace to emergency veterinary care for burns and charring on the inside of the animal’s mouth.
Asaad is staying with a friend for the time being, after being told that he would not be able to return to his unit “until further notice” because of smoke and heat damage.
More than 60 firefighters responded to the scene. The fire was declared under control at 5:45 a.m.
The cause of the fire is under investigation, Sanders said. An exact damage figure has not yet been determined, but it is easily in the hundreds of thousands of dollars range, officials said.
Sanders said all of the residents would be temporarily displaced but it is not yet known what the long-term impact would be. Residents were being assisted by the Red Cross.
