Fire Damages Apartment Building on St. Louis Avenue

(THE APARTMENT BUILDING ON ST. LOUIS AVENUE WHERE THE FIRE OCCURRED. YOU CAN SEE THE OPEN STORM DOOR IN THE MIDDLE OF THE BUILDING WHERE THE UNIT IS BEING VENTED DUE TO SMOKE)

Fire damaged three apartment units in a building at 421 West St. Louis late Tuesday morning.

No one was at home in any of the apartments in the six-unit building, which is located immediately east of Springfield Clinic. Fire damage was confined to Unit 3 and smoke spread to Units 2 and 4.

A resident of a neighboring apartment building phoned firefighters at 11:38am.

The apartment unit where the fire occurred was occupied by Tony Cohorst and Becky Meyers. The two were in the process of moving out and had left the unit with a load of furnishings about a half-hour before the fire call.

Effingham Fire Chief Joe Holomy said the cause of the fire was a coffee pot left on a hot plate next to the kitchen stove. The heat caught the cabinets above on fire and the fire spread from there.

Firefighters had the fire out within 20 minutes of being dispatched. Holomy said voids in the walls between the units allowed the smoke to spread to the neighboring apartments.

The chief is estimating damage to the structure at $30,000 and to the contents inside the unit where the fire occurred at $2,000.

The building is owned by Brad and Amy Hibdon.

Crews from the Teutopolis and Watson departments were called either to assist on scene or to staff Fire Station #3 on the city's south end.