WASHINGTON — A furnace failure is being blamed for Saturday’s blaze that displaced more than 60 occupants of an Alexandria apartment complex Saturday evening.
Firefighters were called to a three-story building at the Woodlawn Garden Apartments around 6 p.m. after an occupant discovered the blaze; smoke alarms had not activated due to the fire’s location.
Roughly 60 firefighters from Fairfax County Fire and Rescue arrived at the 8400 block of Richmond Highway and extinguished the blaze.
Investigators determined that the fire, which they called accidental, had originated in the attic. They cited the mechanical failure of a natural gas furnace flue. Radiant heat escaped through a damaged section of the flue, they said, and ignited combustibles in the attic.
Approximately 67 occupants were displaced by the fire, authorities said.
NBC Washington reported that buses arrived so residents did not have to stand out in the cold: Temperatures Saturday night were in the 30s dipping into the high 20s. About 40 spent the night in a shelter. Others stayed with family or friends.
Scene photo: two alarm fire on Richmond Highway in Alexandria displaces several people on this cold night. pic.twitter.com/F3CoUuX8t5
— Darcy Spencer (@darcyspencer) December 11, 2016
Up to 12 units were affected with smoke and water damage. One woman was taken to the hospital for a checkup. The fire caused more than $220,000 worth of damage, The Associated Press reported.
No firefighters were injured. Both the Red Cross and the Fairfax County Office of Emergency Management are providing assistance to the displaced, officials said.
“At the moment, we are working with a master plumber and also a master electrician to get the utilities back and running to be able to reopen the building,” Carlos Diaz, assistant manager at Woodlawn Garden Apartments, told WTOP. “We have, so far, 12 apartments in this building that [are] being affected by no water, no heat, no electricity and no gas.”
Diaz says they won’t be able to reopen the building until they get its utilities up and running again. There are also two apartments on the third floor that need to be completely rehabbed.
“Unfortunately, they lost everything,” Diaz said of the residents who occupied those two units. “So we are relocating those families to two brand-new apartments.” Those units are located within the Woodlawn Garden Apartments property.
Diaz says they hope to have the other displaced tenants back home by Monday or Tuesday. So far, it isn’t known when the two severely damaged units will be fit for habitation.
“However, we have contacted Servpro, which will be working to rehab those two units,” Diaz said. “They say it could take several months to do it.”
See NBC Washington’s report on the fire:
WTOP’s Liz Anderson and The Associated Press contributed to this story.
