Fire crews battle blaze in West Bottoms apartment building

Medical crews treated two people for smoke inhalation after a fire broke out about 10:30 a.m. Thursday in a five-story apartment building in Kansas City’s West Bottoms.

Fire crews reported rescuing several pets, including a turtle from one apartment in the brick structure at 1331 St. Louis Ave.

Crystal Cole, a personal trainer at Freight House Fitness, said she was working with a client when they smelled smoke coming up through the floor.

“We checked to make sure it wasn’t our heater,” she said. “We realized it wasn’t and that there was fire somewhere else in the building, so we grabbed our stuff and headed out of the building.”

By the time they got down to the bottom floor, they saw some people already outside. They told Cole that the fire started with a blanket near a space heater or heat lamp.

“They tried to put it out but had no luck,” Cole said. “Some other people ran up and tried to put it out, but the smoke was too thick at that point.”

Ian Davis, owner of Blip Coffee Roasters, said he and his workers were going about a normal morning brewing a few coffees when they started seeing smoke or dust blow by outside.

“We went out to check it out, and we looked up to the second floor and there was a pretty good amount of flame coming out a second-floor window,” Davis said.

“Me and a couple customers started grabbing fire extinguishers from our roasting space and ran up to the second floor, found the area where the fire was, but it was just way too smoky for us to do anything.”

The smoke was black and thick — so thick they couldn’t see the fire or the sunlight from the window.

“We just started letting people know to get out of the building,” he said.

By the time they made it back to the Blip, the roasting space was filling up with smoke and water.

“We started getting things out as quickly as we could until the smoke got too dense for us to get things out,” Davis said.

Firefighters arrived withing minutes, but the fire spread quickly through the building.

Fire commanders announced they had the fire under control about 11:20 a.m., but fire crews continued to work inside the building to make sure the fire had not traveled into noninspected walls or ceiling spaces.

“It is a scary moment because this is an old building with wooden beams,” Cole said.

She said she loves Freight House Fitness, the gym and working out there.

“I am anxious and a little devastated,” she said.

This story was originally published January 28, 2016 at 11:31 AM with the headline "Fire crews battle blaze in West Bottoms apartment building."