Victim recounts Ashby Crossing fire

Dave Kim / senior photographer Ashby Crossing apartment 1161 H caught fire after residents threw a Firday-night party.

Despite the fact that they had a heightened awareness of fire-safety issues, victims of the Ashby Crossing fire continue to reflect on what triggered recent events.

The occupants of an Ashby Crossing apartment building were awakened by the Harrisonburg Fire Department after their neighbors called in a balcony fire last Saturday morning.
The apartment lost its storage unit, but nothing very valuable, according to senior Shelley Streed, who lives in 1161 H. The unit had contained cardboard boxes and Christmas decorations.

The balcony has been condemned and people are not permitted to be on it. The final damage costs have not yet been assessed by Ashby maintenance. The alleged $10,000 in damages reported in the Jan. 22 Breeze was an estimate made by the fire department. Ashby Crossing management was unavailable for comment as of press time.

The occupants of the damaged apartment are fairly sure that they are covered under their parents' homeowner's insurance plans, according to Streed.

According to Streed, she and her roommates still are not completely sure how the fire started. Streed said they were all in bed by 3:30 a.m., and the fire did not start until almost four hours later.

They had had a party the night before, and they attempted to comply with the complex management's written request that smokers not throw cigarette butts off the balcony, according to Streed. The request had been announced through flyers posted in the buildings.

Streed said she and her roommates instructed those who had gone out to the balcony to smoke to put their extinguished cigarettes into an old flower pot.

According to Harrisonburg Fire Chief Larry Shifflett, he speculates that some of the cigarettes were not completely extinguished thus causing the fire.

Streed said, "Being responsible kind of blew up in our faces."

The fire appeared to have ignited slightly before 7:30 a.m. Saturday and began on apartment H's second floor balcony. The fire traveled up to the third floor and was beginning to reach the roof just as the fire department arrived.

Burn patterns showed that the fire most likely started in the flower pot, according to Shifflett.

According to Streed and her roommates, one can see the dark spot beneath the paneling on the far-left corner of their balcony where the fire started where the flower pot was located.

Streed said they were lucky because, as she speculated and observed, the roof paneling had begun to melt, and since the roof underneath was constructed with plywood, which would have quickly and easily burned, it was probable the fire would have been out of control at that point.

According to Shifflett, most of the apartment buildings are constructed with wood frames covered in plywood and vinyl siding.

"The fire department said that if they had gotten there five minutes later, it would have been the Commons all over again," Streed said, referring to the Nov. 10 fire in Commons building 891.

As they extinguished the fire, the fire fighters kept residents updated on what was happening and informed the occupants that a cigarette can sit in a couch for up to five hours before it will ignite, according to Streed. This could explain why the fire did not start for hours after someone had smoked a cigarette on the balcony.

While the fire department extinguished the fire, inhabitants of the building waited outside and were allowed back into the building within one to two hours, according to senior Stephanie Hammack, who lives in 1161 I.

She said that since the fire was on the opposite side of the building, the fire did not directly affect her apartment. She said that she had slept through the incident until her roommate woke her and told her they needed to get out of the building and there were already four fire trucks outside the building.

According to Streed, the experience was frightening, but she and her roommates extend their gratitude toward the neighbors that discovered the fire and called the fire department.

"We were absolutely petrified," she said. "It wasn't exactly fun waking up the day after your birthday with a fire fighter pounding down your door. Thanks so much to the girls who called it in, they saved us. We [the entire building] owe them so much."