Fire Leaves 50 People Homeless : Blaze: No injuries were reported. Red Cross has set up shelter for residents of two Covina apartment buildings.

Up to 50 people were left homeless by a fire that badly damaged two Covina apartment buildings.

Police described the neighborhood where the complexes are located as generally impoverished. “This is a tragedy,” Covina Police Sgt. Chuck Rosales said. “Everything that these people have is in those four walls.”

More than 100 firefighters battled the blaze that began about 9:30 a.m., bringing it under control within an hour. No one was injured, but structural damage was estimated at $890,000. The cause of the blaze is under investigation, Covina Fire Chief Ken Lavoie said.

Resident Phyllis Alba, 27, said the fire started in her apartment. She said she had just returned from the store when she noticed a blaze in her kitchen. She had been frying potatoes before she went to the store, she said, but the stove was off and the pan was removed from the burner.

“I lost everything,” said Alba, a mother of five who is on welfare. “I had just bought my children school clothes.”

The blaze started in one of the six units in a complex at 365 N. Vecino Drive and quickly spread to a 14-unit complex next door at 654 Ruddock St. Both buildings have shake shingle roofs, which helped fuel the blaze, Lavoie said. All 20 units, some of which were empty, were declared at least temporarily uninhabitable.

The American Red Cross set up a shelter a couple of blocks away for those who had nowhere else to go.

“I don’t know what I’m going to do,” said Blanca Johnson, 36, as she and her seven children sat in plastic chairs at the shelter. Johnson said she lost her job working in a candy factory three weeks ago.