January 27, 2010

Blaze forces families to move

      A fire damaged four townhomes in the Westminster Apartments just off County Line Road in Green­wood on Tuesday afternoon.  About 20 Greenwood and White River Township firefighters put out the fire before it destroyed a pair of two-story townhomes in the 1100 block of Londonderry Lane, Greenwood Fire Department Lt. Tracy Rumble said. Two neighboring townhomes sustained smoke damage in the fire.  All the apartments can be repaired, but four families had to be relocated to other units in the complex, Rumble said.

         A maintenance worker, whom firefighters did not identify, was taken to Community Hospital South in Indianapolis to be checked out for possible smoke inhalation. No one else was injured in the fire.  The maintenance worker started the fire while using a torch to heat frozen water lines on the first floor of a two-story townhome, Rumble said. The torch ignited wooden studs in the drywall, which caused a fire to spread through a wall that separated two units.  "It was just human error," he said. "He'd been employed in maintenance there for two years, so he was trained. He just had it on there too long."  Fire spread up the wall, and smoke billowed out of the apartments when the Greenwood Fire Department arrived about 2 p.m. All of the residents who were home already had left the building.

         Firefighters searched the apartments and then put out the fire within 15 or 20 minutes from inside the building. They cut a hole in the roof and knocked out a window for ventilation.  Smoke damaged furniture, clothes and other possessions in the apartments on either side of the burning townhomes, Rumble said. None of the apartments suffered any major structural damage, although new drywall will need to be hung, he said.  No damage estimate was immediately available, Westminster maintenance supervisor Mark Carter said. Westminster called in a contractor shortly after the fire to clean up and renovate the damaged apartments.  The apartment management moved the displaced families into vacant units, Rumble said.  (Reprinted with permission from the Daily Journal)
 

 
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