By By GREG KATSKI
Community Editor
A two-story apartment located at 102 Sparrow Drive received significant damage after a fire was started in the apartment’s kitchen on Tuesday night.
The cause of the fire is listed as an unattended cooking fire, according to Mark Yates, division chief with the Washington Fire-Rescue-EMS-Inspections Department.
The apartment’s tenant told incident commander Jasper Hardison, a division chief with the department, that she was frying chicken on the stove when the fire started.
She had put some chicken in a grease pan and left the kitchen to tend to other business. When she came back, she said the stove was on fire and there was too much smoke to try and put it out.
The call for the structure fire came into the department at 5:39 p.m., and within minutes two fire engines with ladders and two EMS units were on scene.
The department’s first responders reported smoke showing upon arrival at the scene, and called in a Code 2 (structure fire) for backup.
Additional units from the department and the Bunyan Volunteer Fire Department were soon on scene to provide support.
A report by the Washington department estimates that the fire caused approximately $25,000 in property damage and $6,000 in content damage.
Yates said the apartment’s tenant was visibly upset, but that volunteers with the Greater Pamlico Area Chapter of the American Red Cross provided assistance.
Laurie Beech, executive director of the area chapter, said the tenant and her two children were given a room at the Days Inn on Carolina Avenue for three nights. The Red Cross will also refer the family to other nonprofit agencies that can help with clothing, food and medicine.
“We help them get back on their feet,” Beech said in regards to every family displaced by a fire accident.
The tenant living on the other side of the duplex from the apartment damaged by fire was displaced for the night, too, but had a relative to stay with, Beech said.
Yates said that the adjoining apartment received little damage from the fire.
“There was a little bit of smoke from having the door open,” he said.