ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1997, Roanoke Times
DATE: Thursday, January 9, 1997 TAG: 9701100051
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: DIANE STRUZZI STAFF WRITER
BENT CREEK Apartments' fire raged inside the building's floors and walls, making it difficult to tell how much it was growing.
Julie Sandidge got the telephone call Tuesday afternoon at the downtown Roanoke library, where she works. She could think of only one thing on her 15-minute drive home to North Roanoke County.
"I kept saying, 'Please don't let it be my apartment. Please don't let it be my apartment,''' she recalled Wednesday.
But it was.
When a police officer told Andrew Johnson to leave his basement residence at Bent Creek Apartments because of fire, Johnson said he thought it was only a smoke fire. At first, he said, he saw no flames.
"About an hour later, the smoke broke through the roof," he said.
And the seemingly small fire turned into a dangerous situation.
The fire worked its way through the wall and floor spaces of Building G at the apartment complex near Brookside Golf Course. Fire investigators said an electical short about halfway up a second-floor wall grounded out on a copper plumbing pipe, then ignited plastic plumbing pipe and insulation. The fire gradually crept through half of the 12-unit structure.
That's why most residents, even firefighters, did not know how extensive the fire was until it broke through the roof of the three-story building. The fire displaced 28 residents Tuesday afternoon, fire investigators said. Everyone got out safely.
Taco the cat, who was missing Tuesday night, was found Wednesday, Assistant Fire Marshal Rodney Ferguson said. He saw the cat in a pet carrier and confirmed it was the missing feline. "We were real tickled about that," he said.
Wednesday morning, Sandidge, Johnson and his new bride, Debbie, watched as firefighters and maintenance workers foraged through the fire's aftermath. The investigators and workers purged debris and checked to ensure that hot spots had been doused.
Sandidge and her black cocker spaniel, Gilkey, stayed in a vacant apartment at the complex. She bunked with two of her neighbors, also dog owners, she said.
"That's the nice thing about having nice neighbors," she said.
The Johnsons took a room at the Innkeeper on Orange Avenue Northwest. They got the special disaster rate of $33 a night, Debbie Johnson said. They are planning to move into a vacant apartment at the complex.
Sandidge and the Johnsons lived in two of the six apartments that sustained the heaviest damage, Ferguson said. Tenants in those odd-numbered apartments would not be allowed to return. But electricity and gas had been turned on for tenants in the even-numbered units, which received mostly smoke damage.
Management at the Bent Creek Apartments on Greenway Drive refused to talk about the fire.
Ferguson said damages would exceed $150,000, but some residents had renter's insurance.
LENGTH: Medium: 64 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: DON PETERSEN/Staff. 1. Fire officials inspect damage toby CNBa third-floor apartment heavily damaged by Tuesday night's fire at
Bent Creek Apartments. color. 2. Debbie and Andrew Johnson console
each other as a relative, Stacey Ricotta (left), looks on Wednesday
afternoon.