Apartment | Firegeezer

A FIRE THURSDAY EVENING IN A DETROIT, MICHIGAN, residential hotel killed two residents as the 3-alarm fire gutted the five-story building.

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Free Press / Mitchell

Free Press / Eisner photo

Investigators say that an inebriated tenant tried to light a cigarette with a piece of burning paper, but was unsuccessful and dropped the blazing scrap on his bed where it ignited the sheets. The room was quickly engulfed and when he opened the door to flee into the hallway around 8:30 pm, the fire followed and spread throughout the floor.

Besides the two fatalities, a third person is in critical condition and a fourth, a wheelchair patient who lived in the apartment directly over the point of origin, is still unaccounted for. Two firefighters were injured, suffering from 2nd-degree burns and a back injury.

The Detroit Free Press has a 14-image photo gallery HERE.

WJBK-TV has a video report:

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Citizen-Times photo

AN APARTMENT IN AN ASHEVILLE, NORTH CAROLINA, PUBLIC housing complex had an explosive-type event just before noon Monday that started a major fire in the building. Nobody was home at the time of the blast, but a man working in the vacant apt. next door was slightly injured as he was escaping from the building that contains six dwelling units.

The fire got into the attic area and spread along the roof structure presenting a challenge to the Asheville FRD. The Citizen-Times has a brief raw video taken during the early stage of the fire HERE.

Arson investigators do not expect to know cause of the fire until later today (Tuesday) at the earliest. At the time of the fire, the woman who lives in the apartment was in the county courthouse seeking a restraining order against her former boyfriend. An arrest warrant has been issued for him.

Early estimates place the damages at $375,000.

Read the full story in the Citizen-Times HERE. They also have several photo galleries linked from that page.

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