Four people were killed, four others were critically injured and about 30 people were rescued after flames engulfed an apartment building in Milwaukee on Sunday morning, the authorities said.
The fire, at a four-story building in the western part of the city, was reported a little before 8 a.m., Fire Chief Aaron Lipski of the Milwaukee Fire Department told reporters at the scene.
More than two dozen people were rescued by multiple ground and aerial ladders or by firefighters on their hands and knees dragging people out of the building, he said.
“Our firefighters ascending from the second floor to the third floor were fighting fire blowing down the stairwell at them,” Chief Lipski said.
He said that according to emergency calls some residents had jumped from the second floor to escape the fire. The blaze quickly escalated to five-alarm level (which indicates the fire’s high degree of severity), drawing personnel and equipment from multiple agencies.
“As you might imagine, with an advanced fire condition, heavy smoke conditions in a building of this size, with known quantities of people trapped, when our members got here, they were far, far, far outmatched with those initial responding companies,” the chief said.
The identities and the ages of the victims were not immediately available. Four people were taken to a hospital in critical condition, Chief Lipski said.
The Milwaukee Fire and Police Departments are investigating the cause of the fire. The state fire marshal has also been called to help.
Chief Lipski said that the blaze had started in a common area of the building and not inside a unit, but it had then moved “to involve multiple floors and multiple other apartments.”
The fire has rendered the building, which had 85 units, uninhabitable; a couple hundred people have been displaced. Chief Lipski said that the American Red Cross was helping those affected.
“Absolutely a horrible way to begin Mother’s Day here,” he said.
Chief Lipski noted that the building, which was constructed in 1968, did not have a sprinkler system or standpipes installed. He said that a building built before 1974 “of certain size, shape, dimension, occupancy” was not required to have sprinklers.
