WASHINGTON — Two people are dead following a fire at a large apartment building in Southwest D.C., according to firefighters.
Dozens of firefighters responded to the fire at an eight-story apartment building in Southwest D.C. early Tuesday morning. D.C. Fire and EMS said a man and a woman died in the fire, and 40 apartments are uninhabitable.
The victims were identified Wednesday morning as 43-year-old Rashidah Denton of Southwest DC and 43-year-old John Wesley Hunt of Northeast D.C.
Crews responded to an initial call of a fire in the 300 block of G Street SW at the Capitol Park Tower building around 2 a.m. Once crews got on scene, they saw flames coming from a third-floor apartment in the rear of the building.
DC Fire and EMS PIO Vito Maggiolo said responding firefighters called a second alarm to get more help on the scene, given the size of the building and the number of people asleep inside. About 100 firefighters responded to the scene to help with searches and assist residents in the building.
“The door to the fire apartment I’m told was open, so fire was blowing out into the hallway and filling the hallway with a considerable amount of heat and smoke," Maggiolo said.
No other injuries have been reported.
The fire was quickly brought under control in about 15 minutes, according to Maggiolo, and the building was ventilated to remove smoke. Many people living in the apartment were told to shelter in place. Some residents were evaluated at the scene, and no firefighter injuries were reported, according to Maggiolo.
Alona Sanders has lived on the eighth floor of the building for about a year. She was asleep when the fire started.
"I woke up to the fire alarm going off and the fire department banging on everybody's door. But before they came upstairs I already saw the fire trucks pulling up, so I knew something was going on," Sanders said. "So I just woke my family up and made sure we got out safe."
Sanders said four people, including her boyfriend and his three kids (11 months, 4 and 11) made it out of her apartment, along with her dog. She said the smoke from the fire made it difficult to get out.
"We couldn’t get out of one exit, because that’s where the smoke was at, so we had to run all the way down to the other end of the hallway just to get to the exit door and go down the flights of steps. But it was so smoky in there, you couldn’t see. It was smoky, it was black. This is just a bad experience.” she said.
Homeland Security's Emergency Management Agency has brought in warming buses to help people displaced by the fire, Maggiolo said. All third-floor residents were displaced by the fire, according to D.C. Fire and EMS. Management says they will provide housing for the residents. They were escorted back into the building at some point in the morning to grab their belongings. Other residents will be allowed back in their homes once fire crews are done.
Investigators are still working to determine the cause of the fire.
Maggiolo said the same building saw another fire in a different third floor apartment back in October 2019. He said there were no fatalities in that incident.