Owner: Sprinkler system in destroyed apartment complex didn't activate

FAIRBANKSThe fire sprinkler system inside the Geraghty Street apartment complex destroyed by fire early Wednesday had been declared operational by city fire officials a day earlier, but the building's owner said Thursday it appears the system did not activate.

The early morning fire killed at least two people and displaced more than 50 people.

Assistant Fire Chief Ernie Misewicz confirmed that the department had been working with the building's owner to inspect the system and had declared it functional. Owner Monica Sue Carney said she performed a walk-through with fire officials on Tuesday.

The building possessed both a wet and dry sprinkler system with sprinkler heads in each apartment.

Carney, who has owned the building since 1990, had been leasing the building to a prospective buyer since 2010. The lessee had failed to provide proper upkeep for the building and its emergency systems, Carney said, so she had taken it up herself in the fall.

"We were working on the sprinkler system," Carney told the News-Miner on Thursday. "All the tenants knew. I had them sign a piece of paper."

Fire crews are investigating and could not say conclusively where in the building the fire started, Misewicz said Thursday. Tenants who fled the building before fire crews arrived reported seeing the middle of the building, which contained a storefront on the ground floor and 19 apartments on the second floor, engulfed in flames.

While investigators could not say for sure what caused the fire, a number of tenants reported hearing a loud sound like an explosion prior to the fire. Carney had been working in the building Tuesday evening and said tenants told her they "smelled something funny earlier that evening."

"We have no gas in the building," Carney said. "Everything upstairs is electric. Nothing in the apartments could explode like that."

Carney said she suspects that the loud bang reported by tenants, whatever it was, may have been what caused the sprinkler system to fail.

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Owner: Sprinkler system in destroyed apartment complex didn't activate