Investigators believe the fire, which broke out on 14th floor of public housing high-rise, was an accident

This article is more than 9 months old

This article is more than 9 months old

Five people died when a fire broke out on the 14th floor of a public housing high-rise in Minneapolis early Wednesday.

While the cause of the blaze in the Cedar-Riverside neighborhood was still under investigation, the fire chief John Fruetel told reporters that investigators believe the fire was an accident.

The Minneapolis neighborhood is known as Little Mogadishu for the many Somali immigrants who have settled there.

The fire broke out around 4am on the 14th floor of the Cedar High Apartments. Fruetel said firefighters found heavy smoke on the 16th and 17th floors as residents were evacuated through the stairwells.

“A very tragic night at the beginning of a holiday weekend,” Fruetel said. Mayor Jacob Frey, in a Facebook post in English and Somali, called the fire “devastating”.

Fire officials haven’t released the identities of the victims.

Abdi Warsame, a city council member who toured the floor that burned, expressed amazement that more people weren’t killed. The 25-story building caters to seniors and singles, meaning many older residents had to evacuate quickly down many floors.

“It was absolutely gutted,” said Warsame, who is Somali-American. “It was horrendous.”

Fruetel said the fire had been burning for a while and had blown out windows by the time firefighters arrived. A fire alarm was sounding throughout the building, and from a distance, flames could be seen extending 10 to 15ft (3 to 4.5 meters) from windows on the 14th floor.

With those open windows and winds whipping in from an overnight wintry storm, the scene was “an extreme environment of heat and wind-driven fire,” he said.

“I can’t express more about how precarious that scenario was to those firefighters,” Fruetel said. “They encountered a lot of heat ... It was very similar to a blast furnace.”

The chief called it “a very chaotic scenario,” and said firefighters had to go up multiple flights of stairs while people were coming down. He said residents on floors above the fire were told to shelter in place.

Three other people were injured and are being treated at local hospitals. Authorities have not released details of their conditions. A firefighter was treated for an exertion-related injury, Fruetel said.

The building is part of a complex known as The Cedars. Minneapolis Public Housing Authority spokesman Jeff Horwich said Cedar High has 191 apartments, all one-bedroom or studio units. There were 198 residents living in the building at the time of the fire.

Abdirahman Shire, 53, of Minneapolis, said his 74-year-old mother lives alone on the 13th floor. She told him that she was alerted to the fire by the smell of smoke, and that she ran down the stairs to escape.

When she reached the lobby, only six other people were there.

“She said, ‘I open the door and I smelled, and I hear the noise and I run,”’ Shire said. His mother hadn’t been let back to her apartment by midday, but Shire said someone had provided a meal and “she’s doing good”.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest The high rise at 630 Cedar Avenue where an early morning fire left multiple people dead 27 November, in Minneapolis. Photograph: Aaron Lavinsky/AP

Hours later, Tracey Scott, the interim executive director of the Minneapolis Public Housing Authority, said most residents had been allowed back into their apartments.

Several family members streamed into the building on Wednesday to check on loved ones, some of them in tears.

Though the building sits in a heavily Somali section of Minneapolis, it’s a melting pot of newer arrivals in the city. When residents gathered after the fire for a meeting, organizers arranged Somali, Korean, Spanish and Oromo interpreters.

Warsame, the city council member, said he knew one victim was a Somali grandmother, and her children and grandchildren were at the building on Wednesday as they were trying to seek more information.

The fire department spokesman Bryan Tyner said four of the victims were located on the 14th floor and another in a stairwell, and it was unknown if any of them were related or came from the same unit. All of the victims were adults.

Casper Hill, a city spokesman, said the main floor and lower mechanical rooms had partial sprinkler coverage but the rest of the building did not have a sprinkler system. Horwich said the building was built in 1969 and wasn’t required to have a sprinkler system due to its age.

City officials said public housing inspections are handled by federal agencies, and that the city inspected the building only to respond to specific complaints. They said their records showed just a few inspections in recent years.

Calls to the housing and urban development office in Minneapolis were referred to Chicago, where a message was not returned.

