Two residents and one firefighter were transported to the hospital with non-life threatening injuries following a fire that destroyed a suite in a Strathcona apartment building Saturday morning.

Edmonton Fire Rescue received reports about smoke and fire coming out of an apartment on the area of 104 Street and Saskatchewan Drive at approximately 8 a.m.

“I saw the smoke and then I called 911. And then suddenly, like five minutes, there was fire all over the place,” Ghazlan Alajmi, who lives across the street, told CTV News.

“As we pulled up, there was fire shooting up the sixth-storey balcony,” Fire Captain Brian Mihailides said. “We quickly attacked it; it was under control quite quickly. Both windows were blown out; flames were shooting up approximately 10 feet above the window.”

 

The blaze did not extend to other suites and it was under control by 8:50 a.m., fire said.

“Because it is a concrete structure, there was a lot of heat in there, [the suite is] completely gutted,” Mihailides said.

 

The entire building was evacuated.

“I found myself to be one of those people thinking, ‘What am I going to grab?’ In a panic, I grabbed nothing – just ran,” Thomas Dias, who lives next door to the destroyed suited, told CTV News.

Two residents and a firefighter were taken to the hospital with minor injuries, and they have since been released.

“[The firefighter] got a little bit of a burn and so as a precautionary measure, just got sent in. But he will be fine – he will be back to work shortly,” Mihailides said.

The fire is under investigation.

With files from Angela Jung