One resident was injured Wednesday in a predawn apartment fire near the Clarkston campus of Georgia Perimeter College.
Fire crews arriving at the Brannon Hills complex on Baynes Hill Drive off Memorial College Avenue found “heavy flame and smoke conditions on one-half of an approximately 20-unit building,” DeKalb County fire Capt. Eric Jackson said.
“Once we arrived, we did discover that there were individuals still inside the building,” Jackson told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Those people, as well as residents of a nearby building, were evacuated by firefighters.
“We did have one injury to a resident who has since been treated and transported to a local emergency room for further treatment,” Jackson said.
He said fire crews were able to confine the fire to about 10 units.
“We were very aggressive in our attack yet very careful because some of the building did collapse on us,” Jackson said, adding that there were no injuries to firefighters.
He said the blaze was a two-alarm fire.
“All hands were on deck,” Jackson said. “Everyone was working.”
Jackson said he was not sure how many people lived in the 20-unit building or how many of the units were occupied.
While Jackson said the cause of the fire had yet to be determined, resident Faysal Bana, who has lived in the complex for more than 10 years, said he believes it was started by vagrants.
He said there has been an ongoing problem for “a few years” of vagrants breaking into the many vacant units in the complex.
“Most of the apartments are vacant, but every night, you see people going in and out,” Bana said. “Even though the doors are closed, they’re breaking in the windows.”
Bana said Wednesday’s blaze wasn’t the first at the complex.
“This is probably the fourth,” he said.
Yusef Mohamoud, who lives in the building next door to the one that burned, said he was “so scared” when firefighters woke him up to evacuate.
“I thought it was my apartment,” he said. “I’m so happy it’s not my apartment and no one died in this place.”
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