A fire at a Heritage Student Housing apartment complex north of campus killed one man Tuesday afternoon.
The victim, a man in his 50s, was found dead by firefighters.
The fire broke out at about 2 p.m. at 2353 Portland Street. Almost 50 firefighters responded to the scene and contained the fire in 19 minutes. Residents were briefly evacuated from the building, before being allowed to return, a public information officer for the Los Angeles Fire Department said.
One student sustained minor smoke inhalation injuries, the PIO said.
The cause of the fire hasn’t been made public yet.
Another student, who lives two doors down from the apartment that caught fire, said her unit’s smoke alarms never went off during the incident.
“None of my smoke alarms went off. I couldn’t hear anything happening in the other apartment,” Caitlin Prinos, a first-year student in the MFA screenwriting program, said.
It wasn’t until she got a text that a package had been delivered that Prinos left her apartment and realized that a fire had devastated the unit next door. She said building managers didn’t tell her that a fire had taken place until she explicitly asked what happened.
Firefighters told Prinos that the building’s fire alarms are supposed to be linked so that when one unit goes off, all those around it do too.
Prinos was also told that most buildings on Portland Street have sprinklers. Heritage’s apartment complex doesn’t. The firefighter Prinos spoke with said the lack of a sprinkler system contributed to the fire, and made it more difficult to control.
She said the lack of a sprinkler system, in addition to the fact that her apartment has only two windows, is making her consider leaving the complex.
“I was asking [firefighters], ‘Hey, what’s the deal with that?’ And they’re like, ‘Yeah, that’s probably against fire code,” Prinos said.
She asked: “What do I do about that?”
“They were like, ‘Honestly, I’d find somewhere else to live.’”
Heritage Student Housing has not yet responded to requests for comment.
“I’m not staying there tonight,” Prinos said. “I’m leaving and getting a hotel.”