4 Die, Dozens Hurt in Fire, Blasts in Atlanta Building

A fire touched off by a series of explosions sent choking smoke through a 10-story office building Friday, killing at least four people and injuring dozens. Terrified workers smashed windows with chairs, and a woman jumped from the sixth floor.

Many people escaped by climbing onto firefighters’ ladders.

About 200 people, many of them office workers with soot-blackened clothing and skin, gathered on the street outside the Peachtree 25th Building. Some sat down, breathing from oxygen masks.

Electrical Problem

Witnesses said the fire in the south tower of the black-glass building erupted about 10:30 a.m., about 30 minutes after a power failure.

The blaze was preceded by a series of explosions on the sixth floor, witnesses said, which occurred when two electrical workers were repairing a blown fuse. Fire officials said one of the electrical workers was killed. They could not account for the source of the explosions.

The blaze began on the sixth floor but spread two floors below and one above, said Sandra Walker, a spokeswoman for Mayor Andrew Young.

“My understanding is that some firefighters could have saved or helped more people if they didn’t panic. But some people did panic,” Walker said.

“When you have people jumping out of windows, you’ve got a panic situation,” said Tom Perrin, Atlanta’s acting fire chief. Perrin said the building was built in 1962, before a requirement that public buildings have sprinklers. “Three of the fire victims could have been saved if there had been a sprinkler system in this building,” he said.

Lavon McCord of the Atlanta-Fulton County Emergency Management Agency said five people died in the fire, but officials could not account for the fifth death. Tony Gaines, an attendant in the county medical examiner’s office, said the office had received reports of only four deaths.

One woman who jumped from a sixth-floor window was critically injured, Walker said. The woman, one of 38 people taken to hospitals, suffered two broken legs, a fractured ankle and hand injuries.

Some of the others injured were treated for burns, smoke inhalation and cardiac arrest. Five of the injured were firefighters, four of whom suffered smoke inhalation and one who burned his hands, Walker said.