Firefighters contained a large apartment fire at 4848 N. Lydell Ave. in Glendale after flames tore through balconies on the second, third and fourth floors and pushed into the attic space, drawing about 70 firefighters from Milwaukee and North Shore to the boundary-line building Monday evening.
Crews brought the fire under control in about 50 minutes. One firefighter was evaluated for a minor injury and returned to work, and one occupant was checked for smoke inhalation and refused transport to a hospital.
North Shore Fire Department crews were dispatched at 4:40 p.m. after a 911 call reported a fire in the building, while the Milwaukee Fire Department got a simultaneous call at 4:41 p.m. Both departments reached the scene within about four minutes, arriving at 4:45 and 4:46 p.m. The equivalent of a third alarm was sent to the address just north of Estabrook Park, where the building straddles the Milwaukee-Glendale line.
Fire officials said the blaze extended into at least one upper-floor apartment, leaving one unit on the fourth floor with fire damage, another upper-floor apartment with significant fire damage and some damage on the third floor. Milwaukee Fire Chief Aaron Lipski said the fire appeared to have started on one of the building’s exterior porches, while Robert Whittaker said investigators believe it began on a balcony.
Whittaker said crews believe the fire started on a balcony, but the exact cause is still unknown. He also said investigators do not think the fire was suspicious and are treating it as accidental. The building had a sprinkler system, but the sprinklers did not activate because the system performed as designed: they were located in hallways and exit ways, and there was not enough heat in those areas to trigger them. Whittaker said once fire gets into an attic, it can move fast, which is why crews pushed hard to knock down the blaze before it spread further.
The unanswered question is what sparked the fire on the balcony or exterior porch in the first place. Investigators are still working that out, but the early findings point to an accidental fire that spread quickly enough to test the response and damage multiple upper-floor units before crews stopped it.
