5 People Escape Apartment Fire

Firefighters are investigating the cause of a fire that broke out in an upstairs bedroom of an apartment house in the 3100 block of Harbor Boulevard in Ventura just before dawn Saturday.

Five people--Myles Larini, Donna Gooding and three children--were asleep in the residence when the fire broke out, but they all escaped with no injuries. Smoke and flames were coming from the second-floor bedroom window when the first fire unit arrived. The unit had the fire under control within 11 minutes.

“They’d all gone to bed around 2 a.m., and Myles Larini woke up a couple hours later to the smell of smoke,” said Battalion Chief Brian Gordon of the Ventura Fire Department. “He got everyone out of the house before anyone suffered from smoke or the fire.”

Gordon said the occupants were “incredibly lucky. They had soot on their faces when they got out.”

Although the house had multiple fire alarms, Gordon said, none had functioning batteries.

Fire damage was confined to the second-floor master bedroom of the fourplex structure. Structural damage was estimated at $50,000 and content damage was valued at $20,000. Gordon said the Fire Department suspects an electrical malfunction caused the fire.