Seven-alarm fire ravages N. Philadelphia building

A seven-alarm fire at an apartment complex in the city's Ogontz section raged out of control for almost seven hours yesterday.

The fire started at 11:11 a.m. in a basement of the Grange Manor Apartments, a four-building, four-story complex at 1419 Grange Ave., and quickly spread. About 50 of the 60 units were occupied, fire officials said.

None of the estimated 100 residents were reported injured. A firefighter received minor injuries when he fell, Fire Commissioner Lloyd Ayers said.

Ayers said the C building was destroyed, D was heavily damaged by flames, and B sustained heavy water and smoke damage. The buildings have common walls. Ayers said he did not know how the fire had started.

Nine houses along North 15th Street next to the complex were evacuated when water began to flood basements.

Mayor Nutter, who has been criticized for deactivating five engine companies and two ladder companies as part of municipal cost-cutting, went to the scene. "It was a two-minute response to this location," the mayor said. He said 47 pieces of equipment and 179 firefighters had arrived quickly.

The thick, black smoke that poured from the roofs could be seen as far away as City Avenue and the Schuylkill Expressway.

When police arrived, they found residents, alerted by fire alarms, streaming from their units carrying pets and children and little else.

In a third-floor hallway of the nearby Ritz-Conlyn apartments, Grange Manor resident William Beard, 22, stood barefoot, wearing blue plaid boxers and a striped hoodie. He was talking to his girlfriend on a borrowed cell phone as his friends gawked at the flames from a nearby doorway. "If it wasn't for the firefighters, I'd probably still be in there," Beard said.

He said he was asleep when firefighters broke into his apartment and dragged him from his bed and out into a smoky hallway. "I don't know what I'm going to do. Everything I had is in there," Beard said.

Around 1:30 p.m., fire trucks sped up Broad Street as the fire grew to six, then seven alarms. Broad Street was closed between Olney Avenue and Champlost Street, and SEPTA bus routes were diverted around the fire scene.

At a temporary command post at Howell School at 13th and Grange, Rachelle Berrouet, 22, sat holding her 2-year-old daughter, Krisny Scott. The child was wrapped in a bright-red American Red Cross blanket to stay warm. Berrouet, who lived in the badly damaged D building, had time to grab only some identification before evacuating.

"Everything we worked for," Berrouet said, shaking her head. Once unemployed and living in a shelter, she said her family was "back on our feet" and had recently bought a bedroom set and computer.

"Now it's like we are starting all over again," she said.

Ice glistened off the charred trees in front of the apartments as the temperature began to drop. Around 4:30 p.m., firefighters began to spread buckets of salt on Grange Avenue to prevent ice from forming in the wet street. Stacks of pizza boxes arrived to feed hungry firefighters when they took short breaks.

A shelter at the Philippian Baptist Church on North Broad was set up for displaced residents, said Tom Foley of the Red Cross.