St. Louis, MO – ST. LOUIS One person was found dead and seven people were taken to a hospital after an apartment fire Monday morning in the Central West End.
Firefighters using ladders carried about 20 people to safety from windows and balconies. They were trapped by smoke on the third floor, above the fire.
“A very difficult morning,” Fire Chief Dennis Jenkerson told reporters.
The fire began after 8 a.m. in the 4900 block of McPherson Avenue. Capt. Garon Mosby of the St. Louis Fire Department said the person who died was on the second floor and was an adult male.
Mosby said the fire, which was accidental, was caused by unattended cooking.
Mosby said a pot left on a stove either overflowed and snuffed out the pilot light or the pot melted down over a considerable amount of time and melted the regulator that controls the flow of gas. Either way, Mosby said, natural gas built up in the apartment and an ignition source of some kind caused the gas to ignite.
“We’ll probably never know what the ignition source was maybe static electricity, friction, or switching on a light,” he said.
Mosby said unattended cooking is the No. 1 cause of fatal fires and home fire injuries in the United States.
Seven people suffered smoke inhalation.
Vincent Babbitt, 57, lives on the second floor about 15 yards from where the fire began. He said the man who died was friendly and “very hospitable.” He would see him each morning going outside to get his newspaper. The man was not a smoker, Babbitt said.
Babbitt was among several residents who said they heard a loud noise before discovering the fire. He described it as a “blast, like something exploded.” He opened his door and saw the fire.
“The flames were so intense,” he said. “I ran down the steps yelling ‘fire, fire, fire!’ to tell the rest of the neighbors.”
When he got out of the building, he turned and saw more flames. They were coming from the victim’s apartment window. Babbitt saw firefighters scrambling to rescue people, including his upstairs neighbors from a balcony.
The two-alarm fire spread to the third floor of the apartment building, Mosby said. Fire alarms were blaring when firefighters arrived.
Babbitt said he has lived in the Cambridge apartments here for 29 years and says this is the first serious fire.
“I’m lucky to be alive,” he said. “It’s more of a blessing than luck, really.”