March 20, 2011 - 4:31pm
Students forced to evacuate apartment building after fire ravages cars underneath
BY JILLIAN BERMAN
This is a developing story. Continue checking michigandaily.com for updates.
Students living in The Abbey apartment building were forced to evacuate early Saturday morning after a fire charred three cars parked below the building, causing smoke damage to some of the units above the smoldering cars.
As of about 3:15 a.m. on Saturday the cause of the fire was still unknown, though investigators were on the scene, according to Ann Arbor Fire Department Battalion Chief Kevin Cook.
Most students were allowed back in to the building, located at 909 Church St., early Saturday morning. But at about 3:15 a.m. those students whose apartments are located directly above where the parked cars caught fire were still waiting to find out when they would be able to move back in.
Cook said firefighters had to knock down the doors of the most affected apartments — which face the alley behind the front entrance of the building — and students would not be let back in until the doors could be properly locked or replaced.
“I don’t know if it will be done tonight,” Cook said in an interview early Saturday morning.
Students at the scene said they first became aware of the fire sometime between 1:45 a.m. and 1:55 a.m. on Saturday.
Rackham student Robbie Brant, who lives in a house near the building, said he first called 911 at about 1:45 a.m., adding that he doesn’t think he was the first to call 911 to report the fire.
“We could hear the popping,” he said. “I heard people screaming, what I thought was fighting, and I saw the car was on fire.”
Engineering junior Saahil Karpe said he first saw the fire from outside his window.
“I came home from the bars and was hanging out by myself and saw some lights from my living room,” Karpe said.
Karpe added that he was told to evacuate the building by firefighters on the scene and called his friends who live in the building to tell them to evacuate.
Michigan State University sophomore Austin Brooks said he was on his way back to a friend’s house nearby when he first became aware of the fire.
“I was walking outside and I heard a huge pop,” Brooks said.
He added that he saw the middle of the three cars catch on fire first and then the fire spread to cars to the right and left.
LSA sophomore Vishal Shah said when he got home from a party he found that his car had caught on fire. Shah said his car was the farthest right of the three.
“The middle car blew up and mine just got caught up in the mess,” Shah said.
He added that he hadn’t fully comprehended the effects of the fire.
“This will probably hit me tomorrow,” Shah said.
LSA sophomore David Baumstein said he didn’t find out about the fire until he was woken up by Karpe, adding that if Karpe hadn’t called him he probably would have never known about it.
“I was sleeping and then (Karpe) called me and I just ignored the phone call,” he said. “Then I woke up to the fire truck and I called him back and he said ‘you need to get out of the building.’ ”
Baumstein said that he didn’t hear fire alarms going off in his apartment or in the building’s hallways.
“I didn’t hear anything,” he said.
