LITTLETON — Of all the things that could happen, Elsie Tapp can't believe fire erupted in a first-floor apartment of her building, the Windermere East Tower in Littleton.
"It's terrible. We don't know where we're going to go, where we're going to live. What's going to happen to us all?" Tapp said.
Police say Michael Mitchell died on his 70th birthday. The building owners say Saturday's fire started in Mitchell's apartment.
"The hallway was full of smoke. So, I wanted to make sure that my neighbors who are not well, were OK," Joan Jones said. "I knocked on their door to make sure they could get up and out."
The fire started around 5:30 a.m. and many residents were asleep. Jones wanted to make sure others were OK before she started heading out herself.
"The stairway was so full of smoke we could hardly see before we got down," Jones said.
This is the second time fire has broken out in this complex of seniors.
"We've gone through this twice now," fire victim Carla Baker said. "We went through this (two)-and-a-half years ago on the Windermere side and now we're going through it again."
Baker was there in April 2016 when fire tore through several floors just before Easter. Now residents are dealing with another fire just before Thanksgiving.
"Now, this year I buy a Thanksgiving dinner and I'm losing everything out of my house for that again and I'm going to be homeless again," Baker said.
As of Saturday night, more than 50 residents are displaced. Many of them were invited to previously-scheduled community Thanksgiving dinner at the same church where the Red Cross has set up to help victims.
Andy Boian is the spokesman for Southview Place Towers, the owners of the apartment complex now called The Windermere. He said the two fires are just a sad coincidence.
"There should be no worries of the safety of these buildings. I can tell you that these buildings are very well kept up by ownership. I can tell you that the inspector today going through the building felt like the building was secure, that it was safe," Boian said.
Boian said the building is equipped with a sprinkler system which may have helped keep the fire contained to one apartment. But he said the owners want to make sure the air quality in the entire building is good before letting residents back in. Boian said the earliest possible time for people to return home would be Tuesday morning.
Jones said she's thankful this tragedy didn't end up with even more deaths considering most residents were asleep when it started.
"They did a wonderful job containing it," Jones said. "They did a wonderful job. Those firemen were there right away."