Two infants and five adults had to be rescued from a DeKalb County apartment fire Friday morning after a woman mistook a pot of oil for a pot of water and tried to heat her baby’s bottle in it.
Lataya Jefferson, the woman who started the fire at The Woodridge Apartment Homes, said she woke up to see her sister out for work and heat her child’s bottle.
“I warmed up the bottle in what I thought was water,” Jefferson told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
Not realizing the pot was full of oil, she went to check on her 6-month-old daughter.
“By the time I came back to see if the bottle was warm, the oil had erupted, blew the freaking bottle apart, and the whole kitchen was [in] flames,” Jefferson said. “So I grabbed my baby and I ran.”
Jefferson said her kitchen light was broken and the apartment didn’t have a fire extinguisher.
The fire displaced residents on the first floor, but no injuries were reported, DeKalb fire Battalion Chief Vera Morrison said.
“Upon arrival, we had heavy smoke showing from the third floor,” Morrison said. “We had crews that got here very quickly, and they were able to determine that the fire was on the first floor, but we also were able to determine that we had people that were still trapped on the second and the third floor.”
Firefighters put ladders up at the front and back of the building to rescue the victims.
Morrison said it took firefighters about three minutes to extinguish the fire.
“Everything went as smoothly as it could go,” Morrison said.
