There were no injuries to residents or first responders after a fire at an apartment building on 2nd Avenue in Rochelle on Sunday morning, Rochelle Fire Chief Dave Sawlsville said.
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ROCHELLE — There were no injuries to residents or first responders after a fire at an apartment building on 2nd Avenue in Rochelle on Sunday morning, Rochelle Fire Chief Dave Sawlsville said.
Firefighters were called at 9:29 a.m. to 422 2nd Ave. for a report of smoke coming from a building. Fire crews could see the smoke from the fire station and immediately elevated the call to the second alarm level for more mutual aid support.
“We arrived on scene to see heavy smoke on the first floor,” Sawlsville said. “There was a lot of fire on the backside of the building on the outside. It’s an old house that’s been remodeled from a single-family home to two apartments. Because of that remodeling, there’s places for fire to hide. The fire started on the first floor and was spreading to the second floor. We were there for 2.5-3 hours. There was a lot of overhaul work.”
The cause of the fire is still undetermined, but Sawlsville said it started in a storage space. The building sustained over $50,000 in damage, which the RFD chief said may make it a total loss.
There were two occupied apartments in the building and a total of four people were displaced due to the fire damage. The Red Cross was contacted to help those residents with their housing needs.
Responding organizations were Rochelle Fire, the Ogle-Lee Fire Protection District stations of Hillcrest, Creston, Steward and Flagg Center, DeKalb Fire, Stillman Fire, Lynn-Scott Rock Fire, Kirkland Fire, the Rochelle Police Department and Rochelle Municipal Utilities.
Sawlsville thanked RFD’s mutual aid partners for coming to help with the fire and for covering its station. The construction of the apartment building was the biggest hurdle for firefighters Sunday.
“We spend a lot of time studying building construction,” Sawlsville said. “When people take a single-family house and make it into an apartment building, we have to figure out that layout on the fly. We did have to chase the fire a little bit. We got plenty of resources quickly. You never know how much help you’ll be able to get on Sunday morning. The biggest challenge was figuring out how the building is put together so we could get ahead of the fire. We were able to salvage a large portion of the building.”
