Oct. 30--CLIFTON PARK -- The residents of 12 apartments at the Twin Lakes complex are homeless after a fire raged through the ceiling of a building unnoticed early Saturday morning until a dog woke up its owner who lived in one of units.
Clifton Park Fire Department Second Assistant Chief Nicole Smith said the barking dog woke the tenant at about 2 a.m., when he smelled smoke, went outside and saw flames coming out of the roof of his building and called 911.
"It doesn't appear it started inside an apartment per se," Smith said.
All of the building's residents escaped safely, Smith said, but firefighters fought flames until 5:30 a.m. and remained on the scene until 10 a.m. The American Red Cross is assisting victims and has placed them in local hotels until permanent housing can be found.
Smith said the entire building was a total loss, especially after the fire caused the roof to collapse.
The cause of the fire is under investigation, but Smith said investigators are focusing on the structural parts around a chimney at the 56-58 Lake View Road building. According to the website for Twin Lakes, apartments feature fireplaces, and a satellite view of the building on Google maps shows two chimneys coming from the building's roof.
Smith said many of the building's residents expressed concerns over their smoke detectors not going off as flames engulfed the building's roof, but she said officials from the complex had recently inspected all the smoke detectors. In addition, she said, the fact that the fire was concentrated in the building's roof might not have allowed enough smoke to creep into apartments to set off smoke detectors.
"You need a certain amount of smoke to trigger it," she said. "Nothing seems abnormal at this point. It seems the complex did what they're supposed to be doing."
A woman who answered the phone at the Twin Lakes' management office said no one was available to comment on the fire.
