200 Homeless after Indiana Apartment Fire

MARION, Ind. (AP) – A fire destroyed an apartment complex in Marion early Tuesday, displacing its roughly 200 residents but causing no injuries, officials said.

The blaze broke out in an upstairs maintenance area of the Washington Apartments, a former school building, about 2 a.m. Firefighters doused the flames, but the fire rekindled about four hours later and spread, WRTV reported.

Building resident Katrina Black and her boyfriend, Aric Hampton, noticed the fire when she got home from work about 2 a.m. and called 911, the Chronicle-Tribune reported. Hampton and another resident went door to door warning residents before firefighters arrived. Hampton said there were no smoke alarms or emergency lights going off at the time.

Natasha Jackson said she was asleep when firefighters knocked on her door.

“I was sleeping and I came out here and stood” from 2 a.m. to 6 a.m., she told the newspaper. “I ended up grabbing a bag of clothes and baby Pampers.”

A mother and two children were rescued from one of the 32 apartments in the building, which housed about 200 occupants, WTHR-TV reported. The three-alarm fire took several hours to get under control.

No injuries were reported, though the complex was declared a total loss.

Residents gathered outside and watched bleary-eyed as their home burned down. Firefighters gathered salvageable items from each apartment and placed them on the curbside for their owners to collect. The building was deemed unsafe for residents to enter Tuesday afternoon.

Laura Holt of nearby Gas City and a friend walked through the crowd pushing a stroller loaded with snacks and drinks.

“I saw what happened and decided to help,” she said. “We’re not asking for money.”

The cause of the blaze is under investigation. Firefighters were still dousing hot spots Tuesday afternoon. The Chronicle-Tribune said the landlord was putting the tenants up in hotels for 30 days.