Fire Forces Evacuation of 51 : Blaze: Five units in 3-story Laguna Niguel apartment building are destroyed. Residents run for their lives; some say they didn’t hear smoke alarms.

A three-alarm fire raced through an apartment building Wednesday, causing an estimated $400,000 in damage and forcing the evacuation of 51 residents.

Fast-moving flames swept through the three-story building in the Crown Terrace Apartments complex at 30122 Niguel Road shortly after 11 a.m. A woman was treated by paramedics for shock and smoke inhalation, but no other injuries were reported.

The cause of the fire was under investigation, Orange County Fire Department officials said.

Several residents said they were forced to run for their lives when thick, black smoke filled the hallways of the 16-unit building. Some said they did not hear the built-in smoke alarm system go off.

“I smelled something bad and when I opened my door, there was so much smoke that you couldn’t see anything,” said Marilyn Perez, 25, who was home with her two children and mother. “I didn’t hear anything from the alarms.”

Three other residents said they also did not hear the alarms. Fire officials said, however, that they interviewed some residents who heard the alarm system. Investigators said it was too early to tell if the system was faulty.

The managers of the 179-unit Crown Terrace Apartments could not be reached for comment.

“The fire definitely started in a ground-floor unit,” said Orange County Fire Department spokeswoman Kathleen Cha. “We know there were people inside the apartment when the fire started, but we’re still trying to find out what happened.”

Five apartment units were destroyed by the blaze, fire officials said. Another five apartments received smoke and water damage. Concerns over structural damage prompted fire officials to close off the remaining six units in the building.

Most of those displaced by the fire will stay at an American Red Cross emergency shelter at the Crown Valley Recreation Center at 29751 Crown Valley Parkway, officials said.

With his cat, Sebastian, draped over his neck like a black fur wrap, Doug Crofts, a 26-year-old maintenance worker at the apartments, said he “lost a lot of stuff, a lot of personal things. But my cat is safe and I’m going to be just fine.”

John and Debbie Baynes also managed to save their pets, a pair of red tail boa constrictors that wrapped themselves around the couple as they watched the building burn.

“The hallways were full of smoke when I looked out my door,” said John Baynes, 32, whose apartment was damaged by water. “I got out of there and started banging on doors, yelling for everyone to get out.

“We got all of our animals out, but that was it,” he said. “It was a pretty scary scene.”

About 70 Orange County firefighters manning 15 trucks battled the blaze, which took about 1 1/2 hours to extinguish.

“It was burning real hard when we got here,” said Division Chief Richard Witesman. “We managed to knock a hole in the roof and got the fire to head towards the fresh air at that point. That kept the fire from spreading to the outside of the building towards surrounding apartment structures.”

John Nagle, 51, a retired fireman from Tarrytown, N.Y., and resident of the burned building, credited firefighters with great efficiency in putting out the blaze.

“This was a textbook example of an apartment fire, and these guys did what they were supposed to do,” he said. “They put it out in a textbook fashion.”