Fire destroys Rose Village apartment building

Firefighters executed a “quick hit” from the exterior of the buildings, reducing the fire enough to go inside and search for people, Adams said.

“We’re on high alert during these early morning fires, because generally people are sleeping and can get trapped,” Adams said. “We had to act fast and aggressively to begin our search.”

Everyone had evacuated their apartments; no one was hurt, Adams said.

Clark County Fire District 6 and Portland firefighters helped extinguish the blaze. It took 33 firefighters about a half-hour to get the fire under control, Adams said.

Tenant Danny Gonzalez said the fire started in his apartment. He wasn’t home at the time. His former girlfriend — who was reportedly staying there but wasn’t inside when the blaze started — called him multiple times early in the morning.

When Gonzalez got her messages, he drove to the apartment and found his home destroyed.

Gonzalez is in the process of moving, he said, and had removed the majority of his personal belongings. He said he lost a small TV and radio.

“Firefighters were here checking everything out, but they couldn’t say how the fire started,” Gonzalez said.

Nothing could be seen through the hole in the front of Gonzalez’s unit except a blackened living room devoid of anything but a slurry of ash.

Large piles of charred clothing and luggage, and the broken remains of furniture were heaped between the buildings. Rectangular openings were visible on the fire-damaged buildings, where fire personnel had cut out the walls to reach the blaze.

Two units in Gonzalez’s building were destroyed while the third apartment at its opposite end was left uninhabitable, resident Rafael Moreno said.

“It’s smoke damage,” Moreno said, standing outside his apartment Monday morning. “The damage in my place isn’t that bad, but there’s a lot of smoke damage. All of my clothes are ruined. I know I have to move.”

Moreno said his roommate knocked on his bedroom door sometime between 2:30 and 3 a.m. At the same time, a neighbor was pounding on the front door, yelling, he said.

Flames were billowing out of the broken, downstairs window of a neighbor’s apartment, Moreno said, and were creeping up to the second floor. Within 10 to 15 minutes, the fire had spread to the next unit over and the fencing behind the neighboring building.

A woman, who did not want to give her name, let reporters into the upstairs bedroom of her middle unit. Soaked insulation blanketed the room’s floor, and the ceiling was gone, exposing the building’s fire-damaged structure.

The woman said she didn’t have insurance and was unsure how she was going to handle the crisis.

Disaster responders arrived around 4 a.m., providing the tenants with blankets, food and information, according to a news release from Red Cross Cascades Region.

Adams said there were no initial indicators about what caused the fire. The Vancouver fire marshal is investigating.

All of the apartments are currently uninhabitable, Adams said. Tenants of the units farthest away from the fire’s source may be able to move back in, but it’s unlikely, he said.