CINCINNATI — Close to 150 residents of an East Price Hill high-rise apartment building were forced out of their homes after a basement fire tore through the structure early Wednesday morning.
The blaze broke out at Queen’s Tower Apartments on Matson Place, near Olden View Park, in East Price Hill.
Cincinnati Fire Chief Frank McKinley confirmed that no one was injured or displaced.
Given the scale of the response, the thick smoke filling the building and the number of people living at the complex, Wednesday’s outcome could easily have gone another way.
Crews reached the scene in roughly three minutes. Upon arrival, smoke had already spread throughout the apartment complex.
The response was quickly upgraded to a second-alarm fire, bringing 80 firefighters to the scene.
Nearly 150 residents were evacuated from their units.
“We try to find a fire alarm panel which dictates which floor the fire might be on. So what we quickly did was we were able to get individuals to different floors to report back smoke conditions. And so as we were determining smoke conditions on different levels, that really dictated how we were evacuating,” Chief McKinley explained.
The cause of the fire remains under investigation. Chief McKinley said crews believe the fire originated in a basement storage room.
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