10 hospitalized, ‘catastrophic damage’ in Silver Spring apartment building fire, collapse

Multiple people have been hurt in an explosion, fire and building collapse in Montgomery County, Maryland, Thursday morning.

Pete Piringer, of the Montgomery County Fire and Rescue Service, said at about 12:30 p.m. that five people were critically hurt, and about a dozen or so people were “not so serious,” in the fire that started at about 10:30 a.m. at a four-story building at the Friendly Garden Apartments, at 2401 Lyttonsville Road in Silver Spring.

He added that the building suffered “catastrophic damage.”

Fire Chief Scott Goldstein said about 125 to 150 firefighters had responded to the scene, and that 10 people had been taken to a hospital. “It’s too early to speculate” on a cause, or to tell where in the building the fire started.

He said dozens of people would be displaced “tonight and in the near future” from the building and surrounding ones.

At about 12:25 p.m., WTOP’s Mike Murillo, on the scene, said, “It’s hard to believe that I’m looking at half of a building right now. It looks like a smoldering pile of scrap.” He said Piringer told him he was pretty sure everyone had been accounted for.

‘There’s people we knew in that building’

One resident told Murillo that he wasn’t home at the time, but that his mother had gotten out all right: “God relieved me right there.”

That said, “There’s people we knew in that building,” he added.

Neighbor Andre Kenard told Murillo he was in his workshop at the time. “I can hear the sound, and I can feel the boom on my back.” He said his son, an Army veteran, “swung into action. He ran over there, got a lady and a child out, then he ran around back — against my wishes — but he went around back and he pulled another lady out … she was more in shock.”

“I just heard a loud boom by my window,” said neighbor Akosua Safo. When she went outside to investigate, she saw her cousin “just like screaming and like, ‘Come down the stairs.’”

She and her cousin ran over the building that was on fire, screaming the name of her cousin’s aunt, who lived there.

Safo said she saw a woman in a broken window with a comforter wrapped around her, “screaming, like, ‘Please help me out.’” A man showed up to help her out of the building – “thankfully … She was actually ready to jump out.”

She saw a woman coming out on a stretcher with burns. While the fire and explosion may have damaged neighboring building, “I don’t know what happened to my possessions. But I honestly don’t even care. I’m just really hoping no one died.”

Neighbor John Bell told WTOP’s Cloherty that he felt “a big bang” that shook his sixth-floor apartment. He went outside and saw flames shooting into the sky. “I mean, it was something I never saw before.”

Possible causes

A resident told NBC Washington there was a “heavy smell of gas” in the building when he left in the morning.

While he wouldn’t discuss possible causes, Goldstein more than once referred to the fire at the Flower Branch Apartments in 2016, which killed seven people and was caused by a gas leak.

“There are similar concerns” as far as structural viability, Goldstein said.

“This is obvious a really tragic event here,” County Executive Marc Elrich said. “My sympathy goes out to all the families who have been affected. … This is a tough day.”

He said he hoped most of the residents of the building were out at work or school. “If they were at home, you gotta ask what happened to them,” Elrich said. “It’s depressing.”

Read more in Spanish from our news partners at Telemundo 44.

NBC Washington’s live helicopter shot:

This is a developing story and will be updated. WTOP has several reporters on the scene.