Kitchen Fire Fills Crystal Towers Apartment Building With Smoke

ARLINGTON, VA — Firefighters from the Arlington County Fire Department extinguished a blaze Thursday night at a high-rise apartment building in Pentagon City.

Units responded around 6:33 p.m., Thursday for the report of a fire at the Crystal Towers Apartments in the 1600 block of S Eads St. Firefighters located the fire in a 10th floor apartment in the south tower of the complex.

"There was heavy smoke on the 10th floor," said Taylor Blunt, a public information officer with ACFD. "We isolated the source to a specific apartment. We went inside and found that part of the kitchen was on fire. With that particular fire, it produced a decent amount of smoke. Of course, the smoke went out in the hallways and traveled a little bit through the building, so we had to do a pretty heavy smoke removal operation."

An alarm had alerted south tower residents of the fire and the building had been evacuated.

"It took about 10 minutes to knock the fire down itself," Blunt said. "Of course, that meant cleaning up hot spots and everything else to make sure there was no fire at in the walls or the cabinets. But the smoke removal took upwards of an hour, because, with high-rises like that, you have to do a lot of work in ventilating the smoke out of stairwells and windows, things like that, because it's such a large space."

Due to the cold weather, fire personnel had moved south tower residents to the north tower while firefighters knocked down the fire and implemented smoke removal operations. Residents were able to return to their apartments after about 90 minutes.

No injuries were reported to residents or fire personnel. Investigators are still working to determine the cause of the fire.

More than 15 ACFD units responded to the call, with assistance provided from the City of Alexandria, Fort Myer, and the Metropolitan Washington Airport Authority fire departments.

"Kitchen fires are usually one of the number one reasons why there are structure fires, so we always recommend that people take as much precautions as they can in the kitchen," Blunt said. "We don't know the cause yet, but there are so many things that can go wrong in the kitchen. We regularly put out safety tips for how to keep safe cooking or just keeping combustibles away from open flame on a stove."

#Alert Units are on scene of a structure fire in the 1600blk of S Eads St. Stay clear of the area and expect a heavy response. pic.twitter.com/XaXIJ2BP6u
— Arlington Fire (@ArlingtonVaFD) February 18, 2021