Five-Alarmer at Denver Apartment Complex Worst in Decades
The Denver Post
(TNS)
UPDATE ( 10:30 a.m. Sunday):
A five-alarm fire that tore through a partially built apartment complex in Denver’s Washington Virginia Vale neighborhood on Friday night — the worst Denver firefighters have fought in at least 30 years — is expected to keep burning through the weekend.
Denver Fire Department crews were on scene four minutes after 911 calls about a structure fire along Leetsdale Drive between South Forest and South Hudson streets started coming in at 6:45 p.m. Friday, Chief Desmond Fulton said Saturday afternoon.
The cause of the fire is under investigation and investigators are looking into the fire from “all angles,” Division Chief Robert Murphy said, including reports of fireworks in the area before the fire started.
Most of the building at 5337 Leetsdale Drive, which property records show was set to be a 283-unit luxury apartment complex called Harker Heights, has collapsed, Murphy said.
The 233,902-square-foot complex — about the size of four football fields — was valued at $23.2 million in 2025 and operated by Texas-based real estate investment company Embrey. A spokesperson for the company did not respond to an email seeking comment Saturday.
Firefighters have not been able to enter the wreckage to investigate the cause or search for victims because the fire is still burning, Murphy said, and what remains of the building is unstable.
Crews have remained at the scene since the initial response and likely will keep working to put out the fire through Sunday, he said.
Fire crews also will need to bring in heavy equipment to move debris and fully extinguish the fire.
“The fire has taken most of this building’s innards out,” Murphy said at a news briefing in front of the property Saturday afternoon. “You’re kind of seeing a fresh face on the side here, but inside it’s completely gutted by fire.”
The fire will continue to produce smoke “for a while,” Murphy said, and folks who are sensitive to pollution should consider relocating or wearing a mask to reduce symptoms.
One firefighter was injured Friday night when his hand hit a hose stream, causing his shoulder to be pulled out of place, Murphy said. The firefighter was treated at Denver Health and has been released.
There were 156 firefighters called out to battle the flames as they quickly consumed the length of a city block, including crews from South Metro Fire Rescue, Aurora Fire Rescue and the Denver Police Department, officials said.
Those fire departments also stepped in to staff Denver Fire Department stations where crews were dispatched to the Leetsdale Drive fire.
Flames were able to spread so quickly because the building was largely empty and likely did not have fire suppression in place, Murphy said.
“I don’t know if any of us have seen a fire on this scale in our careers,” Murphy said. “I’m in the 30th year of my career, and this is the first five-alarm, almost six-alarm fire that we’ve ever had. We have had other large fires, like the Glendale fire and Emerson Street fire, but they never reached the capacity in terms of firefighters that this one did.”
Several fire engines capable of pumping 1,000 gallons of water a minute had to be refueled at least four times during the night, Murphy said. As of Saturday afternoon, there were still 35 firefighters, including four engine companies and four ladder companies, working the fire.
Samantha Palmer, who lives a few blocks south, started hearing sirens just before 7 p.m. While hearing sirens isn’t unusual in metro Denver, these sirens didn’t stop, and her phone soon started buzzing with neighborhood alerts.
“I went outside, and from the backyard I could see a plume of smoke and orange flames,” she said.
Palmer was already on edge because of the extremely dry conditions in Colorado this winter, and she checked on the fire every hour for most of the night, worried about embers landing on bone-dry grass or her wood fence.
“All that’s playing through your head is you don’t know which direction it’s going to go,” she said.
Palmer praised fire crews for “acting so quickly and keeping something that was extremely out of control under the control that they did.”
“Even seeing it today, I don’t know how it didn’t cause more destruction,” she added.
Firefighters kept the flames from destroying neighboring buildings, although some surrounding homes and businesses were damaged, including a Sherwin-Williams paint store, Murphy said.
The Denver Police Department issued evacuations for people living behind the apartment complex because of the extreme heat. The evacuations were lifted Saturday morning.
Leetsdale Drive remains closed from South Forest Street to South Holly Street, officials said.
Police in Glendale reported significant power outages impacting surrounding neighborhoods on Friday night, most of which were resolved by Saturday. Xcel Energy reported 15 customers were without power near the fire scene as of Saturday afternoon, according to the utility’s outage map.
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