Aug. 30, 2023 7:50p
(WGTD)---Tenants of a 16-unit apartment building on Kenosha’s south side that was destroyed by fire last weekend are speaking out.
They say the smoker in the apartment where the fire apparently began had a history of carelessness in disposing of cigarette butts.
Gabrielle Vasquez and her boyfriend, Terrence Mitchell, lived in the apartment directly below the smoker. Vasquez says she complained on several occasions about the woman upstairs flicking butts off of her second-floor balcony. The butts wound up in flower beds and on their patio--and elsewhere. "We could look up and see they were in her (balcony) floorboards," she said.
On the afternoon of the fire, Vasquez and Mitchell had a friend over who entered their apartment through the door adjacent to the patio. The friend immediately remarked that someone appeared to have a charcoal grill going, judging from the amount of smoke outside.
Mitchell and Vasquez stepped out and quickly determined that the building itself was on fire. They ran back inside. Mitchell pulled the hallway fire alarm and started banging on doors while Vasquez reentered her apartment to slip on some shoes and grab her purse and phone. She went back outside and snapped a photo of flames dancing on an awning of the building.
From there, a brisk wind took over and spread the flames throughout the attic of the two-story building.
The fire department concurs that the most likely cause of the fire was careless use of smoking materials.
In her statement to investigators, the smoker denied being careless.
Because of the extent of damage, Vasquez and Mitchell have been unable to reenter their apartment. They’ve opened a gofundme account because neither had renters’ insurance.
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