Grand Forks apartment fire scars bedroom

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Firefighters dowsed a blaze in the bedroom of a Grand Forks apartment late Friday afternoon after neighbors reported flames and smoke coming from a window.

Captain Jason Swopes of the Grand Forks Fire Department entered the second-story apartment at 3538 11th Ave. N. with other firefighters to find “heavy, dark smoke conditions.”

“It was tough to see,” he said. “It took us a little bit to search for the fire, but when we found it, we gave ‘er a good knock down and ventilated.”

Swopes said that after two searches of the two-bedroom apartment, nobody was found inside.

Dede Iverson, who lives across the street, stood with folded arms and a concerned look as the fire department brought the blaze under control.

Iverson said her daughter saw smoke as she walked past the building and called 911.

“I went to go look, and then we saw the flames coming out,” she said.

Smoke and flames came from one window on the north end of the three-story building, which is part of the Stanford Court apartment complex. Iverson said smoke also billowed from of the building’s chimney stacks.

Swopes said the bedroom sustained extensive damage, the cost of which he put at $25,000.

“The whole room is done — a lot of smoke throughout the apartment,” he said.

Swopes said the apartment above likely sustained smoke damage and the apartment below probably had water damage. But he guesses that the only residents displaced will be those in the apartment where the fire started.

He said he thinks one or two people lived in the apartment.

The cause of the blaze is still under investigation.

—Archie Ingersoll

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