Deadly Milwaukee apartment fire displaces about 100 people

Eddie Edwards was getting ready for work Sunday morning when he heard the sound of glass shattering. 

“All I could hear was glass breaking, nothing but glass breaking,” Edwards said. “Then I just hear people screaming, ‘You got to get out of the building.’” 

After smoke billowed into his apartment when he opened his front door, he told his 16-year-old daughter and his girlfriend that they would have to climb down the back balcony. 

“I said, ‘We got to go out the balcony way,’” he said. “‘I don’t know how we’re going to get down. Just pray to God that God is with us.’”

Edwards, who has lived at Highland Court Apartments for three years, said he leaped to safety from the fourth floor of the building. Monday morning, he was back outside the property waiting to learn when he could get back into his apartment to get his personal belongings. 

Five people died in the five-alarm fire on Sunday, while another seven — including a 1-year-old — have been hospitalized for their injuries.

The fire displaced about 100 residents of the apartment complex on Milwaukee’s near west side. Thirty-nine people slept at an emergency shelter set up by the Red Cross of Wisconsin on Sunday night.

Milwaukee Fire Chief Aaron Lipski said the building is now uninhabitable.

While sitting on church steps across the street from the building he’s lived in for 11 years, Johnny Grove said he’s still not sure what he’ll do next. He stayed with family Sunday night.

“It’s been devastating,” Grove said Monday morning. “I got to figure out where to go now.”

Grove lived on the second floor and he waited on a ledge outside of his window until members of the Milwaukee Fire Department came to his rescue Sunday morning. Lipski estimated members of the department rescued 30 people.

“They did phenomenal work,” Milwaukee Mayor Cavalier Johnson said about the fire department.

Johnson said he also talked with some of the people who lived in the building and were able to escape. 

“They [residents] were trying to direct the fire department where they could put ladders in order to save lives,” Johnson said. “It wasn’t just people fleeing the building for their own safety, they were putting themselves in jeopardy to make sure that their fellow citizens were helped too, and that’s what Milwaukee is.” 

The Milwaukee County Medical Examiner’s Office identified those who died as 40-year-old Torrell Coleman, 62-year-old Verna Richards, 76-year-old Mark Chaffin and 67-year-old Maureen Green. The fifth victim, a woman, has not yet been identified.

The cause of the fire, which started at about 7:30 a.m. Sunday morning, is still under investigation. On Sunday, Lipski said it appeared the fire started at a common area of the building. 

A statement from the Milwaukee Police Department said the department is investigating the incident with the help of the Wisconsin Department of Criminal Investigations and the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. 

Staff with the American Red Cross of Wisconsin set up the emergency shelter at Holler Park in Milwaukee, about 7 miles from the apartment building. Red Cross spokesperson Jennifer Warren said people at the shelter are receiving food, mental health services and comfort kits with hygiene products and blankets. 

Edwards said he went to the shelter, while his girlfriend and daughter stayed with family Sunday. 

“I was just trying to get my family out,” Edwards said. “Next step is to try to get our stuff out.”

The 85-unit apartment building is in Milwaukee Alder Bob Bauman’s district.

“I would say it is the quietest multi-unit large building I have on the near west side,” Bauman said.

Edwards said many of the residents of the property are older. 

“The manager, she’s very good here,” he said. “She does her job.”

The property is owned by Wisconsin Robinson Family Limited Partnership, according to online property records. A reporter was unable to reach anyone with that partnership Monday.

Because the building was constructed in 1968, it is not required to have a sprinkler system, Lipski said.

Bauman said there are likely hundreds of other multi-unit apartment buildings in Milwaukee that were built before sprinkler systems were required. But he said it would need a change in state law to require those buildings to retrofit with sprinkler systems, as he said the state building code is governed by state statute.

“So our hands are tied, there is basically nothing we [the city] can do,” Bauman said.

Robin Zevotek, a  principal fire protection engineer with the National Fire Protection Association, said sprinklers save lives. 

“The amount of loss for when it comes to both property damage and the loss of life are so much lower when we’re including fire sprinklers,” Zevotek said. 

Data from 2017 to 2021 from the association found that sprinklers were, “effective at controlling the fire in 97 percent of the incidents” where sprinklers were present and operating.

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