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By Donald E. Franklin and Todd C. Frankel of the Post-Dispatch
About two dozen people were forced out into subfreezing temperatures Tuesday night when a fire caused extensive damage to a three-story apartment building in the city’s West End.
Firefighters used aerial ladders to rescue three people from the burning building. No injuries were reported.
The fire started shortly after 7 p.m. on the third floor of a building in the Alpha Apartments complex in the 1100 block of Hodiamont Avenue, near Skinker Boulevard and Suburban Avenue, authorities said.
Kim Bacon, a Fire Department spokeswoman, said the fire started on the third floor. The cause of the blaze was undetermined late Tuesday.
A large section of the roof of the 12-unit building was destroyed, and most of the third floor was heavily damaged, fire officials said.
Marilyn Sims, an occupant of the apartment where the fire started, said she had tried to get her furnace to work by connecting two thermostat wires. A short time later, her apartment was filling up with smoke.
“I got the children and called 911,” said Sims, who led her two daughters, an 11-month-old and 15-year-old, and her 8-year-old son downstairs to safety. Before leaving the building, Sims said she knocked on doors to alert other residents to the fire.
When firefighters arrived, they discovered that three people were trapped on the third floor, Bacon said. The firefighters hoisted ladders to the windows and pulled a man, woman and 4-year-old girl from the building.
Bacon said firefighters were hampered by iron gates that surround the huge apartment complex. Some firefighters parked on Skinker and directed water over the fence to the burning building.
Ameen Bajwa, owner of the building, said he did not know how the fire started. He said he had offered to allow displaced residents to stay in vacant apartments in the complex. He said, however, that they would have to arrange for heat and electricity to be turned on.
The bitter cold was the enemy of many residents as they watched their homes burn. Cars full of people, mostly children, trying to stay warm dotted the side streets.
Rachel Canada, 25, huddled under a Red Cross blanket as a friend tried to put dry socks on her wet feet.
And a few feet away, David Walker, 13, shivered in short sleeves and shorts, with Sponge Bob slippers the only thing on his feet.
When a neighbor alerted Azalia Taylor to the fire raging two stores above, she told her three boys to take their jackets and get out.
She then ran down the hall and knocked on the other doors screaming, “Fire, get out!”
Taylor, 30, said she remembered that the smoke detectors in the hallway were not going off.
She acknowledged that her landlord was offering apartments in other buildings but said she didn’t know what she was going to do.
“I haven’t even thought about it yet,” Taylor said, her hands shaking in the cold, spilling her Red Cross cup of hot chocolate.
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