GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. — More than 80 people are still without a place to go Monday evening after a fire tore through an apartment building in downtown Grand Rapids.
"It was terrifying," said Taharah, a resident of the apartments. "I went in the hallway screaming at everyone to run because there was a fire."
"It was like surreal," she added.
Just before noon on Sunday, the Ferguson Apartments building along Sheldon Boulevard SE and Oakes Street SE went up in flames.
Meagan is also a resident. She says she had just gone outside when she noticed the fire.
"I looked up and there was smoke just billowing out of the top," she said.
No one was injured, but all of the residents had to find somewhere else to go.
"There was a fire on the rooftop that appears to be in the area where the solar panels were," said Jeremy Deroo, CEO of Dwelling Place, which owns Ferguson Apartments. "Fortunately the fire did very little damage within the building."
The American Red Cross set up a shelter at a church across the street to help the 83 residents that had been displaced.
"We were concerned that many people wouldn't be able to go back to their apartments," said West Michigan Chapter Executive Director Breeze Ettl.
The fire is still under investigation but the residents are hoping to get back into the building as soon as possible.
"A lot of these residents are just coming off the streets and they're still adjusting to being in here," Meagan said, "and this just throws a huge disruption into their settlement process."
Ettl agreed that this is a very vulnerable community.
"Often these are the kind of folks we're helping, who can't afford a hotel room and who they may not have friends and family that they can stay with," Ettl said.
The American Red Cross said they'll stick around as long as needed to make sure these residents always have a safe place to go until repairs are finished.
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