18 people displaced in Koreatown after fire tears through apartment building
Several families in Koreatown are displaced after a fire ripped through an apartment building on Tuesday morning.
Crews from the Los Angeles Fire Department were dispatched to the 3200 block of James M. Wood Boulevard just after 7:30 a.m. for a two-story apartment building that was on fire.
An emergency traffic alert was issued due to the compromised roof and partial roof collapse. Aerial footage of the fire shows heavy smoke coming from the attic.
About 90 firefighters knocked down the fire by 8:20 a.m. The LAFD said 18 people were displaced and the American Red Cross had been notified to help provide resources.
Firefighters said that of the eight units in the building, three were red-tagged, meaning no one could stay there, and five were yellow-tagged, meaning residency would be considered again after inspection from the Los Angeles Department of and Safety.
Rini Crofts is one of those people now looking for another place to stay after her first-floor unit was impacted. She walked through the burned remains of her apartment, where water from the firefighters was seen seeping through the lights and paint bubbles on her ceiling.
"Red tagged, water damage and they're scared the ceiling is gonna collapse on me," Crofts said. "So, I need a new home."
Alexander Garcia and his family are also now without a home. They said that they received a knock on the door when the tree outside was on fire.
"We came outside and tried to extinguish it with a fire extinguisher, and got a home from the garage and tried," Garcia said. "It was a lot of smoke, you couldn't see the flames. Just black smoke."
The cause of the fire remains unknown.
Firefighters said that they were called to the address twice on Tuesday morning; first at around 5:30 a.m. when the tree was reported to be on fire. After extinguishing that fire and leaving the scene, they were called back two hours later upon learning that the roof of the apartment building had caught fire.
"The fire progression was certainly well developed when we arrived on scene," said LAFD Battalion Chief Brian Franco.
He said that some of the first firefighters to respond to the scene quickly realized that something was wrong with the roof and reconsidered their strategy to control the blaze.
"They felt the structural integrity of the roof change, so that told them to back up off the roof where they were working," Franco said. "Luckily, there was still plenty of roof that was safe, due to the building construction. But, it is something we're always concerned with — firefighter safety."
