A woman died and more than a dozen people were hurt after a fire broke out on the seventh floor of a high-rise apartment building early Saturday in Silver Spring, Maryland, displacing more than 400 people, officials say.
The fire started at about 6 a.m. in the living room of an apartment at Arrive Silver Spring at 8750 Georgia Avenue, Montgomery County Fire & Rescue said.
Crews faced heavy smoke up to the 12th floor and worked to rescue residents calling from inside the building during the fire. Some residents struggled to get into the hallway and were trapped in their apartments, others found refuge on balconies, Montgomery Fire Spokesperson Pete Piringer said.
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“Thick, heavy black smoke, a lot of heat, so the firefighters were faced, and the residents were faced with that chaos right in the beginning,” Piringer said. "You have fire crews going up, residents coming down all in the same stairwells. And yes, the smoke conditions on multiple floors throughout the building were identified as extremely dense."
At least 10 people were taken to the hospital with injuries by authorities. Seven additional people took themselves to the hospital and three firefighters were treated for minor injuries, authorities said. One woman did not survive.
“It was all black in the stairwell. I couldn’t breathe, my eyes were watering up, and so I said, ‘You know what, I’m not going to make it,’’’ resident Stephen Wilkes said. “It was wild.”
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Wilkes and his wife had run from their 15th floor apartment awakened by alarms. He said his wife got out ahead of him, while he had to run into a wall of acrid smoke.
"So I went back upstairs to get air," Wilkes said. "There were two times when the firemen came by. They told us the first time to stay where we were because that was the best place to be so we could get air. And then the second time, they safely evacuated everybody to the far stairwell."
Neighbor Voss Harriga and his girlfriend had to turn back from their escape, too.
"We hit the stairway with a couple people. By the time we hit the seventh floor, it was black. Couldn’t see, couldn’t breathe so I said OK, we gotta go back up," he said.
Upper floor neighbors were letting people into their apartments where there was still breathable air.
"We stayed on [a neighbor's] balcony for about an hour," Harriga said. "We started hearing like small explosions and stuff and glass cracking."
Officials evacuated the building and brought buses to the apartment to help keep residents warm, since temperatures were about 29 degrees when the fire first started, according to Storm Team4 Meteorologist Ryan Miller.
More than 400 residents were displaced and some 208 units were deemed uninhabitable. The Red Cross was at the scene, and a temporary shelter was set up for residents at a nearby Doubletree Hotel.
More than 100 firefighters responded to the fire, which was extinguished about three hours after it began. Two dogs and one cat also died in the blaze.
"The operations are now focused on resident services and investigation," Piringer said.
The damage was estimated at about $2 million, including $1.5 million in structure and $500,000 in contents, the fire department said.
Georgia Avenue remained closed while crews were at the scene.
The cause of the fire is under investigation.
This is a developing story. Stay with News4 for updates.
