No injuries were reported in the apartment fire last week that displaced 41 people.
By: Scott Morgan
FLORENCE Mike Sullivan needed just one thing to see his daughter in Italy. He needed his passport.
April 28, sometime just before lunch, Mr. Sullivan picks up his phone at work and is told he has probably already lost everything. His home Apartment No. 11 is burning. The roof had collapsed and what hadn’t caved in is still on fire.
By the time he returns to Academy Woods Apartments, firefighters from 10 municipalities, responding to three alarms, are tearing vent holes in what’s left of the roof over Building D. And he has indeed lost everything.
Except the passport. It was in his bedroom, untouched by the flames that consumed 16 of the 24 apartments in and ultimately displaced but did not so much as mildly injure 41 people.
"I believe in God," Mr. Sullivan says. "There’s no doubt about that."
On a perfect, breezy Monday, all that remains of Building D are a half-dozen empty apartments caked in dust and ash, walls that even Township Fire Marshal Kevin Mullins shakes his head about and wonders, "I don’t even know how they’re still standing," and a handful of small miracles. A few of the 41 people displaced by the fire have come back to gather what they can. Their success depends on how far from the center of Building D their apartments are.
The fire started nearly dead center, either in Apartment 15, on the ground floor, or 16, which sits on top. Fire Chief Edward Kensler got there first, a few minutes past 11 a.m.
"I pulled around the back and flames were blowing out of the first-floor window and fire inside the second-floor apartment," he says. Around front, flames were blowing through the windows on both floors. "That fire really had a head start on us," he says. "That’s one of the things we’re looking at, why did the fire get such a big lead on us."
One reason was air. There was a lot of it for the flames to breathe. Flush with air, the fire grew and spread to the attic space and the roof, where the first responders went to cut ventilation holes less than six minutes after the call came through, Chief Kensler says. He had no way of knowing how long the fire was burning before the call came in he just knew it was exceedingly hot and storming outward toward both ends of the building. How it started, how long it burned before the call and how hot it got are still in the air. But two hours after the call, the fire was under control. Crews stayed until midnight to make sure it didn’t get ahead of them again.
Brenda Williams is going to stay with friends. Though her apartment No. 22 escaped the flames, her roof caved in and destroyed nearly everything she and her 11-year-old daughter had. What’s left fits into the small laundry basket she and her mother, Ann, who came in from upstate New York to help, are filling on this breezy Monday morning.
Ms. Williams shakes her head while she and her mother dust off DVDs and stuffed animals and clothes. They can’t get the smell out of their noses.
They consider the big miracles that nobody was home, in any of the apartments, as far as they know, when the fire broke out; that they have each other and that they have friends to stay with. And they consider the small miracles specifically, the lives of their pet rabbit and hamster. They were inside when the roof came down on top of them and smashed their cages. Both came back from the vet Monday evening in perfect health.
The younger Ms. Williams isn’t sure what to say or how to feel. Her mother, on the other hand, says she’ll pray. Not so much for herself, but for the person if indeed the cause of the fire turns out to be human error responsible for starting the fire.
"I wouldn’t want to be that person," she says. "That person is going to need a lot of prayer."
Elsewhere in front of Building D, scooters and strollers and children’s toys dot the grass while fire officials check inside for valuables and irreplaceables for the residents who can’t return. Some apartments, such as No.1 on the far right, are undamaged, but the building has no utilities and is uninhabitable. The residents of Apartment No. 1 quietly drag their furniture and clothes and food to a rented U-Haul truck parked around back, knowing they may not get to return here.
The building itself may have to be torn down, according to Assistant Township Administrator Tom Sahol. It will be up to local building officials to decide whether it can be saved, but no one seems optimistic and representatives from Academy Woods have publicly stated that they will have to rebuild.
In the meantime, the residents scatter to friends and family and receive assistance from the American Red Cross. They will receive money from a township emergency fund soon, says Mr. Sahol. The account was started in 1996 after a fire leveled six homes in town. That fire, to which Mr. Sahol responded as a member of the Fire Department, was the worst Florence Township had known until last week.
On that, he and Chief Kensler agree.
"As far as affecting people, this one is up there," Chief Kensler says. "This is probably the worst. I’m just happy we could save as many apartments as we did."
Still, less than a week after the fire, Chief Kensler hopes to shake the doubt from his firefighters. They worry that people don’t believe they did all they could, he says. And he wants people to know that every firefighter dozens of them did everything possible.
"I give lots of credit to the firefighters on the scene," he says. "We saved eight apartments."
Township officials are collecting funds to assist residents affected by the April 28 fire. To donate, visit the Township Municipal Complex during normal business hours or make checks payable to The Florence Township Emergency Relief Fund, c/o Florence Township Municipal Complex, 711 Broad St., Florence, NJ 08518.

