ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Monday, February 5, 1996 TAG: 9602050031
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: CATHRYN McCUE STAFF WRITER
A 5-year-old boy playing with a cigarette lighter Sunday started a fire in Northwest Roanoke that destroyed one apartment and left two others water-damaged, said district Fire Chief Garry H. Basham.
No one was injured in the blaze at Salem View Apartments on Panorama Avenue, Basham said.
Firefighters contained the fire within 20 minutes of the 7:42 a.m. call, Basham said. Tenants of the apartment complex had been evacuated by the time fire crews arrived, he said.
It was the second time this year firefighters were called to the same apartment. On Jan. 26, food cooking unattended on a stove started a kitchen fire that caused about $2,500 of damage, Basham said.
The apartment had a smoke detector but no batteries, or the batteries had gone dead, the chief said. He added that other apartments apparently did not have operable smoke detectors, because Sunday's blaze caused so much smoke that it should have set off alarms in adjacent apartments.
"If the fire had occurred in the wee hours of morning, there could have been fatalities," Basham said.
The message he's trying to get across, he said, is that rental property managers and tenants share a responsibility to make sure smoke detectors work properly.
Sunday's fire comes in the wake of the Jan. 20 fire that killed five people in a Southeast Roanoke house. Investigators have found no evidence of smoke detectors at the house.
Basham said the manager of the Salem View Apartments put the displaced tenants in vacant apartments at the complex.
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