3 hospitalized, others displaced after 12-story apartment building fire in Detroit

A fire at a 12-story apartment building in Detroit Thursday morning prompted multiple rescues, sent three people to the hospital and temporarily displaced residents as firefighters worked to clear the building.

The Detroit Fire Department was dispatched to the apartment building at 888 Pallister at approximately 8:12 a.m. after receiving reports of a fire alarm. When crews arrived, they found smoke coming from a ninth-floor window.

Firefighters immediately began evacuating the occupied building and carried out several rescues. A mother and her two children were brought out through normal evacuation routes, while an adult man had to be rescued from a ninth-floor window using a ladder truck.

Detroit Fire Battalion Chief Jeff Urbas said the building's size and the number of residents inside required firefighters to scale up their response quickly.

"Our first-due companies saw active fire when they got here with a small response, so they immediately called for a bigger response," Urbas said. "Then we had more members to help, whether it's through ground ladders, through platform trucks, whatever it takes. We're gonna go find you. We're gonna go get you."

Firefighters located and extinguished the fire inside a ninth-floor apartment. Officials said the blaze was contained to that unit, though smoke damage extended from the ninth through the 12th floor.

Three people were taken to local hospitals with non-life-threatening injuries. The adult man was transported to Detroit Receiving Hospital, while two children, accompanied by their mother, were taken to Children's Hospital of Michigan. Several other residents were evaluated and treated at the scene by firefighters and EMS crews.

For residents like Joshua Walton, the scene was both emotional and frustrating.

"I went to go take my daughter to school this morning. Now I'm back home and don't even know if I can even go home," Walton said.

Walton, who lives in the building with his 9-year-old daughter, said the uncertainty surrounding the damage is difficult to process.

"I just lost my house back in 2024 to an explosion. I just lost my mom recently. I was trying to find that center, medium ground, and to come into this again ... I can't lose anything else again," he said.

Another resident, Duran Henderson, said he was on the 10th floor when alarms began sounding.

"You couldn't even see inside the window of the ninth floor. It was that black," Henderson said. "There is fire all over the place, coming out the windows. A man was hanging out the one window. They had to evacuate him with the boom on the fire truck."

Warming buses were brought to the scene for residents forced out of the building while firefighters assessed smoke and water damage.

The cause of the fire remains under investigation by the Detroit Fire Department's Fire Investigation Division.