Apartment on Berkeley catches fire, no injuries
By Ethan Smith
Published in News on April 21, 2016 1:46 PM
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News-Argus/ALAN CAMPBELL
Emergency personnel with Goldsboro Fire Department work the scene of an apartment fire Wednesday evening at 2108-K N. Berkeley Blvd
A fire just after 8:30 Wednesday night at the Stoneview Apartments at 2108 N. Berkeley Blvd. left nobody injured and only one apartment damaged as firefighters worked quickly to extinguish the blaze.
Firefighters with the Goldsboro Fire Department responded to a structure fire call at 8:31 p.m. Wednesday evening and arrived on scene to find Apartment K in the Stoneview Apartments complex on fire.
The fire began on the back porch and spread into the attic, threatening to spread to adjacent apartments. Firefighters cut a hole in the roof above Apartment K to provide ventilation for the fire and crews worked on the interior and exterior of the apartment to get the fire extinguished.
Firefighters got the fire under control at 9:10 p.m.
Brenda Hartley, 60, was inside the apartment at the time of the fire with her brother, Otha Ray Sasser.
Brenda Hartley's daughter, Amanda Hartley, said her mother was watching her two children Wednesday and that she noticed the blaze when she arrived to pick up her children.
"I came to pick them up and saw the corner of the house in flames," Ms. Hartley said. "I ran inside and told them their apartment was on fire and got everybody out, and then we alerted the neighbors and got them out. It started on the back porch on the back corner of the apartment and spread into the attic. My uncle (Sasser) was sitting on the couch in the apartment and it was backed right up against the window that overlooks the porch, and when I ran inside after I saw the fire the flames were right at the window where he was sitting."
Brenda Hartley and Sasser were displaced by the fire, and the American Red Cross was called to provide aid to the displaced occupants.
Residents of the adjacent apartments, apartments L and M, were allowed to return to their apartments after the fire was extinguished.
The cause of the fire remains undetermined, but investigators suspect a discarded and not fully extinguished cigarette could have caused the fire that originated on the back porch of the apartment, as Brenda Hartley told firefighters she does smoke and had been doing so on her back deck before the fire started.
An estimated $50,000 worth of damage was caused to the apartment during the fire.