Blaze Guts Condominium, Damages Unit Next Door

A fire raced through two condominiums Wednesday, gutting one and causing major damage to the other.

Officials were still investigating the cause of the 1:30 p.m. blaze, which apparently started in the garage of a condominium on Windflower, said County Fire Department spokeswoman Kathleen Cha. The fire then spread through the unit, collapsing the attic and wood-shingled roof.

No one was injured, but the building was declared a structural loss, Cha said.

The blaze also seared through the common wall with the unit next door and caused extensive damage there, Cha said.

A housekeeper and two children, 3 and 5 years old, were in the first unit at the time, Cha said. The housekeeper, Anna Rojas, ran upstairs to wake up the children and the three escaped unharmed.

In the condominium next door, Heather Huntley, 17, was talking on the phone in the kitchen when she noticed what she thought was “glowing” fog swirling around her glass door. Huntley said she ran outside and saw that flames were flicking through her neighbor’s garage and had reached her own home.

“I ran back inside and got my dog and came back out,” she recalled Wednesday afternoon as she watched firefighters dousing the flames.

One witness, 16-year-old Joshua Testa, grabbed a nearby water hose, climbed a ladder onto the roof, and sprayed at the hot spots.

“I just couldn’t sit and watch and do nothing,” Testa said afterward. “I sprayed that roof until a fireman told me I had to come down.”

More than 45 firefighters took one hour to control the blaze, which caused $300,000 in damage to both units. Residents in condominiums next to the ones on fire were evacuated for a short time, fire officials said.