1-Alarm Fire in Collingswood Damages Apartments, Leaves No Injuries

A one-alarm fire Friday morning at the Pacific Apartments in Collingswood was brought under control in 20 minutes with no reported injuries.

When firefighters arrived at 7:56 a.m., two minutes after the call came in, flames were shooting through a front bedroom window, said.

"We were able to contain the fire to the bedroom," Davis said. "The cause is under investigation by the county fire marshal."

Four units in the garden-style apartments at 117 Pacific Avenue, near Cooper River Park, were evacuated. Davis said smoke alarms in the building were working.

"I heard glass breaking," said Mark Morrison, 34, a worker at J&J Snacks who was in his basement apartment there with his 21-year-old daughter. "I went to my door and a firefighter said 'Get out now!' I went to my daughter's bedroom and got her and her friend and pushed them out the door."

Morrison said he didn't smell any smoke. The blaze was in the first-floor apartment above him. His wife, Cicely, 39, who rushed home from work after the fire, said it was a "blessing" that no one was hurt.

"That fire could have come through the floor, but God contained it," she said. "Nobody got hurt. We might not have our material things but we have life."

Neighbors said a woman and her 15-year-old son lived in the apartment where the fire occurred. The woman sat in a nearby SUV Friday morning outside of the charred, busted-out window of their apartment. A man in the front seat of the vehicle said the family did not want to speak.

Kofi Boafo, 56, a data company worker who lived on the second floor of the complex, over the blaze, stood on the sidewalk looking up at his apartment.

"I'm not surprised. She's a bad example," he said. "I don't know what I'm going to do now. All I keep thinking about is all my computers and all my other stuff."

Boafo said he has lived here for six years and nothing like this has ever happened.