The Columbus Fire Department responds to a structure fire at Two Worlds Condominium Association on Abundance Drive on Thursday. The fire was next door to a building that was severely damaged by fire last December.
Mike Wolanin | The Republic
For the second consecutive year, fire broke out in an apartment at the Two Worlds Condominiums just days before Christmas.
At 10:18 a.m. Thursday, Columbus firefighters received a call about smoke coming out of vents at 2075 Abundance Drive, CFD spokesman Capt. Mike Wilson said.
“I was just in bed and I noticed smoke coming out of the vents, so I got out of there as quick as I could” tenant Katie Kime said. “Then, I started knocking on doors to make sure everyone (in the three other apartments within the building) were out.”
When firefighters arrived at 10:22 a.m., smoke was showing from the exterior of the unit, Wilson said. The smoke became much heavier once emergency units got inside the the building.
The first priority of the first-responders, which include both Columbus Police and firefighters, was to make sure everybody was out of the four-unit apartment house.
An early inspection shows there was little to no fire damage in the building’s three other apartments, Wilson said. Each of the masonry and wood units, which were built in 1973, contain 1,249 square feet of living space, according to county records.
Before firefighters began investigating the cause, they did two searches of the apartment itself to make sure there were no people or pets that may have been overlooked in the confusion, the CFD spokesman said.
“They found fire within the duct work of a heating unit,” Wilson said. “It extended into the wall, primarily between the first and second floor. They were able to get into that and extinguish it very quickly.”
In fact, the fire was completely out by 10:35 a.m. — just 13 minutes after first-responders arrived.
When firefighters arrived, they saw the condominium was sparsely furnished. A friend of Katie Kime, who is the daughter of Foundation for Youth Executive Director Chuck Kime, says she began moving into the unit just a few days ago.
Since the firefighters were able to extinguish the flames quickly, the combined structural and content damage has been limited to about $25,000, Wilson said. That included two windows that had to be knocked out to ventilate the unit and clear out the smoke.
For many first-responders, Thursday’s fire may have evoked a sense of deja vu. It was in the apartment building immediately north of an identical four-unit structure that caught fire on Dec. 9, 2020 — at about the same time of the morning as Thursday’s fire.
As many as 11 people were displaced during last year’s large fire that erupted at 2055 Abundance Drive. While an exact cause for the blaze was never released, one firefighter said it appeared to have started in the vicinity of a fuse box.
At least 65% of the roof on the building was destroyed during last year’s fire, with the building declared a total loss. One of the neighbors said repairs had been recently completed when Thursday’s fire broke out at the building next door.
