Cape, Jackson crews respond to Whitener Street apartment fire

Cape Girardeau firefighters responded to an apartment fire early Wednesday morning.

At 8:04 a.m. firefighters responded to the 2000 block of Whitener Street where they discovered an apartment on fire. According to interim fire chief Randy Morris, the fire originated from a first-floor apartment.

“Fire was coming out of the back side of the building in a first floor apartment,” Morris said. “It sustained heavy fire damage, heavy smoke damage. There is moderate smoke damage throughout the ‘A’ side of the building. There was a little bit of residual smoke on the ‘B’ side on the first floor, but we were able to blow all that smoke out.”

Fire crews respond to an apartment fire on Whitener Street in Cape Girardeau.JC Reeves ~ Southeast Missourian

According to Morris, when firefighters arrived, all the residents from the “A” side of the building had already evacuated.

“When we got here, there’s six apartments in this building, all of those folks had evacuated out,” Morris said. “We ended up going over here to the Bravo section, knocking on some doors, waking some people up and getting them out of the building.”

The Cape Girardeau Fire Department upgraded its alarm roughly 10 minutes after arriving at the scene as there was a report of the possibility of a child still inside the building on the first floor.

“We sent some crews in to aggressively search that area,” Morris said. “Then we had a lady pull up that was the mother, and was able to tell us, ‘Hey, no, the kid’s not in there.’

“Anytime we have a suspected rescue or something like that, we try to upgrade the alarm to get, one, city coverage, and then, two, additional people here on the scene. That’s why our Jackson neighbors come over to help us.”

Initially there were conflicting reports of where the fire was located.

“It initially came in as Themis, then had a second caller call in and say it could be Whitener,” Morris said. “One of our trucks got here and found it was Whitener Street.”

According to a news release, an estimated $75,000 worth of damage was done to the property.

According to Morris, there were no injuries sustained in the fire, and the origin is currently unknown.

“No injuries, everything’s good,” Morris said. “Everything pretty much was, firewise, contained to that apartment. That’s where most of the damage is. We’re going to try to look at it and get an area of origin. At this point, they said the fire was in the bedroom, but we’re going to try and narrow that down a little bit.”

Jackson Fire Department assisted Cape Girardeu firefighters with the incident, while Scott City, East County and Gordonville departments covered the fire stations in Cape Girardeau.