Honolulu firefighters extinguished a three-alarm fire Thursday that damaged at least six units of a Kapiolani Boulevard apartment building.
Neighbors say the four-story, walk-up Iolani Terrace building at 2745 Kapiolani Blvd., across from the H-1 freeway Kapiolani offramp, was a former Chaminade University dormitory that has been mostly vacant recently.
A Honolulu Fire Department spokesman said firefighters responded to a 1:05 p.m. call, arrived at 1:08 p.m. and had the fire under control at 1:25 p.m. No injuries were reported.
The building consists of three floors of apartments above a first-floor carport. Photos posted on social media showed flames lapping up from the carport and onto the building. Smoke from the fire could be seen from miles away before the fire was brought under control.
Sixteen HFD units responded to the fire. HFD did not immediately know the suspected cause or damage estimate.
The bulk of the flames came from the ground-floor parking area, which also appeared to be used as a storage area for furniture and other items. The fire spread to the units above, damaging at least six, according to Capt. David Jenkins, an HFD spokesman.
Heru Bryan, a resident in an adjacent four-story walk-up, said he initially thought his computer was burning before he opened his front door and saw the fire at its peak. Bryan threw some items in a bag and left. However, his building was downwind of the blaze, and it was too hot to use the nearest staircase to evacuate, he said.
“It was coming up fast. I’m thinking, now what do I do?” Bryan recalled. He used the building’s only other staircase — but draped himself in a curtain to shield the heat, he said.
“This is too close for comfort,” he added. “This was frightening.”
The heat melted the license plate of a Toyota Camry parked in the lot and badly damaged by the fire.
A neighbor estimated that only 10 percent of the building was occupied, and the HFD spokesman said everyone in the building was evacuated.
A week earlier, on Sept. 28, HFD responded to a rubbish fire under the H-1 freeway offramp across the street from Thursday’s fire.
“At this time there is no indication that this rubbish fire and today’s building fire at the Iolani Terrace are related,” Jenkins said in an email.
The 18-unit apartment building was built in 1970 and is just down the street from the Marco Polo condominium complex, which was the scene of a fatal high-rise fire in July.
In December 2015 the Iolani Terrace was sold by Chaminade University to Ying Hua International Investments LLC for
$5.3 million.
