Firefighters evacuated Penn State students from a downtown apartment building Saturday night after a stove caught fire in an unoccupied residence.
Alpha Fire Co. officials said there were no injuries, and authorities reopened The Ambassador Building, 421 E. Beaver Ave., at about 11 p.m.
Firefighters forced entry into the fourth floor apartment and found a "moderate" amount of damage stemming from a stove fire that spread to the kitchen cabinets, Alpha Fire Co. Chief Nick Kuchmay said.
"It had the potential to be a lot worse," he said, adding that firefighters used ventilators to clear the smoke.
Four fire trucks, two police vehicles and two ambulances shut down the 400 block of East Beaver Avenue as a crowd of about 75 people gathered to watch the events unfold from across the street.
Student Dave Walkcovic lives across the hall from where the fire occurred and looked into that apartment when he was allowed back in the building.
"It looked like charcoal," he said. "The whole kitchen was black."
Walkovic (sophomore-broadcast journalism) said he and his friends were watching the Ohio State football game in his apartment when they heard a fire alarm go off from inside the apartment across the hall.
Gray smoke leaked beneath the door, which felt hot when they touched it, he said.
"We went back into my room and I was like, 'Fire, everybody get out!' " he said. After calling police, he and his friends knocked on the doors of other apartments on the fourth and third floors before the fire trucks arrived.
Fire extinguishers and ventilators were used to control the fire, Kuchmay said.
Thick black smoke poured from the fourth floor apartment as the white light from the firefighters' flashlights flickered through the window.
Penn State student and first-floor resident Krystal Donovan said she thought the incident was just a false alarm when she heard the alarms go off.
"We just heard people saying, 'Oh my god, there's a fire on the fourth floor,' " Donovan (junior-elementary education) said. "We didn't know what was going on; we didn't know what was going to happen. We were nervous."
Walkcovic said there are no sprinklers in his apartment, and Kuchmay said no sprinklers went off in the apartment where the fire occurred.
