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CHAPEL HILL — Thirty-three people escaped without serious injury from a blazing apartment building early Thursday morning at the Sunstone Apartments.
As other residents and police officers banged on people’s doors in Building 207 Thursday morning, flames chased up the back side of the building.
“I woke up to the sound of somebody pounding on the door, saying, ‘There’s a fire. We need to get out of here,’” said Tyler Utt, 24. ‘It was my friend’s roommate.”
They got up, put on some clothes and ran outside and began knocking on other residents’ doors.
The fire was burning on the second floor and moving up toward the third floor, so he went to the apartment just above the fire.
“We banged on the door until they came out,” he said. “While I was standing in the door, the flames broke through their porch glass, and flames started pouring into the apartment.”
The group raced down the steps to safety.
Meanwhile, in another part of the 24-unit building, two residents were trapped on a balcony. The Chapel Hill Fire Department set up its ladder truck and rescued the pair.
“The fire was approaching the unit,” said Lisa Edwards, the public information officer for the Fire Department. “The firefighters heard them screaming for help and directed the unit to the balcony and got them out.”
The Chapel Hill Fire Department received the first call about 4:30 a.m. Thursday that the building, located on Conner Drive off East Franklin Street, was on fire.
When firefighters arrived, flames were visible.
Chapel Hill police officers were already at the scene helping with the evacuation, Edwards said.
Only one person appeared to be injured, and that person had a small burn on the hand, which was treated at the scene, Edwards said.
In addition to the 33 people who made it safely out of the apartment, three dogs and some cats also were evacuated, Edwards said.
The three-story building contained 24 apartments, and normally there would be about 96 residents in the building, but many of them were students and had left town because of the fall break, Edwards said.
Fifteen of the 24 apartments were severely damaged, said Deputy Chief Caprice Mellon. It took about one and a half hours to bring the fire under control, she said.
The Orange County Chapter of the American Red Cross assisted the firefighters while they were working the fire, and assisted the displaced residents by providing them with food and clothing vouchers and places to stay.
The cause of the fire has not been determined, Edwards said.
