3 Tenants Hurt as 50 Flee Fire at Apartments

Three residents of a city of Orange apartment complex were injured Saturday morning in a fire that left approximately 50 others temporarily homeless.

According to Battalion Chief Darell Verburg, 12 companies from Orange, Garden Grove and Anaheim extinguished the fire at the City Terrace Apartments in less than an hour. Firefighters rescued 60 people by plucking them from the balconies and windows of the top two floors of the three-story complex.

Verburg said the cause of the fire, which did an estimated $450,000 damage, was still under investigation Saturday night.

2 Boys Credited

A Red Cross spokesman credited two young boys with rousing the residents of the burning building early Saturday morning.

According to Harry Huggins of the Red Cross, Shahab Nya, 11, and his brother, Shahin, 6, were responsible for evacuating the first floor of Building 2, at 180 City Boulevard West, and also alerted residents of the second and third floor of the building. Approximately a fourth of the tenants are senior citizens, said Huggins, who assisted in the temporary relocation of the evacuees. The boys’ father, Hooshang, helped a number of those in wheelchairs down the stairs, Huggins said.

Began in Kitchen

The fire began in the kitchen of the apartment of Norman Sadowsky, who suffered burns to his scalp. Two unidentified women, one of whom was wheelchair-bound, suffered from burns and smoke inhalation, Verburg said.

Sadowsky’s apartment was destroyed, two of the apartments received major damage from the fire and a number of others had smoke damage, Verburg said.

Huggins said about half the tenants were evacuated from the complex. He said some of them were put up in a hotel by the Red Cross, and about 20 others had since returned to their apartments.