By Nathan Pilling, Robert A. Cronkleton, Kendrick Calfee
The Kansas City Star
INDEPENDENCE, Mo. — A family of four, including two young children, died when a kitchen fire ignited early Wednesday and spread quickly, engulfing their Independence apartment building, said Independence Fire Chief Jimmy Walker.
The flames, which erupted before 6 a.m., destroyed one building at the Indy Ridge Apartments in the 19000 block of East 37th Terrace, north of the Independence Commons shopping center, Walker said during a noon news conference at the nearby Centerpoint Medical Center.
As of Wednesday evening, officials still had not released the names of the victims, waiting until relatives were notified.
The bodies of the mother, father and their two children — ages 3 and 8 — were found about three hours into the response on the third floor, in the heaviest area of fire, Walker said.
“Our crews were trying desperately to get up to the third floor, couldn’t do it,” he said. “I have to commend my people for making a valiant attempt to do everything they can to make a rescue. Unfortunately today it didn’t work out.
“Our hearts go out to the family.”
The massive blaze, which took an emotional toll on first responders, began as a cooking fire in one of the units, according to Mike O’Connell, a spokesperson for the Fire Safety division of the Missouri Department of Public Safety. The fire did not start in the unit where the victims lived, O’Connell said.
An Indy Ridge resident had left the kitchen while cooking and, hearing the smoke alarm, come back to a grease fire, Walker said Wednesday night. The resident attempted to put out the fire with a fire extinguisher before fleeing the unit, leaving their door open.
The fire spread to two floors, as well as the attic and roof of the apartment building, Walker said. The victims had been in a neighboring apartment.
Although the fire was contained to one building, it affected 24 units. Walker said the building is a total loss.
The American Red Cross was helping 32 people displaced by the fire.
“It’s a sad day for the community,” Walker said. “We’ll pull together.
“From here on out we’re going to focus on taking care of our members and make sure their mental health is cared for.”
‘Heavy fire showing from third floor’
Firefighters responded shortly before 5:50 a.m. to the blaze at the apartments north of the Independence Commons shopping center, near Missouri 291 highway and East 39th Street.
“It was a report of a kitchen fire,” said Battalion Chief Eric Michel, a spokesman for the Independence Fire Department. “Our crews arrived on scene and saw heavy fire showing from the third floor and went out on an aggressive interior attack and rescue operations to evacuate the building.”
A smoke detector in the apartment where the fire started alerted a resident, who called 911, Michel said.
Radio traffic of the Kansas City Regional Public Safety channel captured by Broadcastify.com provides some detail about the call.
At 6:01, the dispatcher said, “19104 East 37th Terrace South, on a building fire, very well involved.” And about three minutes later: “Fire confirmed. Three people are trapped. We don’t have any contact yet.”
At 6:07 a.m. came the message: “Please advise that there’s now four confirmed entrapments.”
Walker said firefighters entered the building and made multiple rescues by ladders and through the stairwells before the structure began to collapse, forcing fire crews to pull back.
“These apartments have wood exterior stairwells which really helps increase the spread of fire,” Walker said during a radio interview on KMBZ. “So we were behind the eight ball from the very beginning. Our crews made a very aggressive attack.
“Our crews rescued a number of people from inside, off balconies ...”
As the fire grew exponentially, firefighters switched to fighting it defensively. The Independence Fire Department called upon nearby fire departments to assist.
“It was a big fire,” Michel said.
Michel said what makes large fires like the one Wednesday so challenging is that a large number of people live in the building, and it is not clear to firefighters who’s home and who isn’t. That requires firefighters to go door-to-door and search all of the apartments. Meanwhile, other fire crews are working hoses to get water on the fire.
The cold and time of day also makes it more difficult.
Two firefighters had third-degree burns, were taken to a hospital for treatment and have been released, Walker said. Firefighters prevented the fire from spreading to other buildings in the complex.
One resident, who lived in another building in the complex, told The Star that the sight of the building engulfed in flames was terrifying.
“I went outside and it was just engulfed in flames,” said Kat, who declined to give her last name out of safety concerns.
“It was really scary,” said Kat, who recorded a lot of the fire while she was waiting for a ride to work.
“I just asked a firefighter if everybody was OK and he said, ‘No.’” Kat said. “So that’s just terrible.”
‘You need to get out’
Residents had little warning that the blaze was consuming their building before they fled to safety in the bitter cold.
Carissa Schulke, Justin Cochran and their dog, Pumpkin, residents of the building that burned, stood shivering watching as firefighters continued to work mid-morning. Schulke said she was awakened by the sounds of popping, then heard sirens. When she looked outside, she saw a red glow.
“All of a sudden, they didn’t even knock on my door, they just busted in, ‘Hey you need to get out, you need to get out,’” she said.
Another resident, Kaitlyn McCallister, woke up and sensed that it was too warm in her home.
“It’s too early for the sun to be out,” she said, recalling the moments after she was roused from sleep. “So I went and opened the blinds and you just see little flurries and fire everywhere. I screamed at my boyfriend, ‘Get up, we gotta get out of the house!’”
She and others watched as firefighters battled the blaze.
“I didn’t think they were going to get it out,” she said. “It kept lighting back up and lighting back up and lighting back up.”
According to Broadcastify.com at 8:28 a.m. a dispatcher announced: “Fire under control.”
The managers of the apartments sent a text to residents Wednesday afternoon that there would be mandatory inspections of each unit to ensure that all smoke detectors are working.
Coming home to devastation
Seirra Tyler , 24, has lived in a third-floor apartment in the unit that burned since Nov. 1 . She spent the night with her boyfriend Tuesday and got a “random message” Wednesday morning asking if it was her apartment that was on fire.
“I just went to Google and I looked and I saw,” Tyler said. And she immediately worried about her cat, Tiger.
She arrived at the apartment complex around 9 a.m., after crews had put out the fire.
“Obviously I was very emotional and tried to run into (the apartment),” Tyler said. She said firefighters stopped her.
Instead, they went up to the third floor for her.
“A firefighter brought him down to me,” Tyler said. “... He was just soaking wet and just scared.
“I just couldn’t stop crying and thank the Lord he was alive.”
Tiger was in the hospital late Wednesday afternoon, and she said he would need to be monitored for smoke inhalation for 48 hours.
“I’m very lucky,” Tyler said, her voice breaking. “I can’t even imagine what other people are going through. Especially the family that passed.”
Frozen fire hoses
The bitterly cold and windy weather posed a challenge to battling the fire, Walker said.
“Hoses freeze, we freeze, I was frozen just a little bit ago,” he said. “This is the way these incidents go in the weather.”
When the fire broke out, temperatures were in the 20s, and winds were blowing around 16 mph with gusts up to 24 mph.
Shortly after 8:30 a.m., firefighters extinguished the fire and were working to put out hot spots. Michel said fire crews were working to clear the inside of the building.
The cause of the fire is under investigation. Investigators are working to determine what caused the fire to spread so rapidly.
Ownership, management changed recently
Jackson County records show that the apartment complex was purchased just recently, in August 2024, with a loan taken out for just under $21 million. The property is incorporated as the Independence Ridge Apartments LLC, a holding of the Read Property Group in Brooklyn, New York, run by real estate investor Robert Wolf.
The apartment complex’s website says the apartments are under new ownership and management.
“We have no landlord complaints from tenants at Independence Ridge for as far back as I can see,” said Rebecca Gannon, public information officer for the city of Independence. “I can tell you Independence Ridge passed their most recent Rental Ready inspections in June 2023.”
The city’s Rental Ready program has faced recent scrutiny after The Star revealed that an apartment building riddled with pests and plumbing issues and other problems had managed to pass its inspections, and that Independence has been cutting resources from its inspection program.
The apartment complex has been the site of a previous fire that heavily damaged a building in the complex.
In November 2009, a fire heavily damaged a three-story building in the complex. No injuries were reported in that fire, but 42 residents were displaced.
Fire investigators determined that that previous fire was caused by an electrical problem inside a wall.
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