Arson blamed for fire at off-campus apartment bldg.

Sixteen people had to be evacuated from the building on the 4300 block of Spruce Street. An act of arson set off a one-alarm fire yesterday afternoon in an apartment building at 4311 Spruce Street -- a four-story building that houses a number of University graduate students and area employees. While no one was injured in the fire, a total of 16 people were evacuated as residents and neighbors looked on in disbelief. Fire fighters used ladders to rescue several people trapped inside the building, Philadelphia Fire Department Capt. Earl Hutz said. A second-floor hallway of the building became engulfed in flames after a mattress was set on fire around noon, according to Philadelphia Fire Department spokesperson Capt. Henry Dolberry. He added that 40 fire fighters helped extinguish the blaze in under a half an hour. Dolberry noted that the matter is under investigation, adding that an arsonist has not been identified and there are no suspects or witnesses. He explained that security in the building may have been compromised yesterday when many newly-signed tenants were busy moving into their apartments, leaving the building vulnerable to trespassers. Diane Tarbuck, a spokesperson for University City Associates -- the company that owns the building -- conceded that a tenant may have propped open the building's front door for easy move-in, but said the scenario was unlikely given the obvious threats to security. Visitors to the building must be buzzed in by owners in order to gaining access to any one of the 55 apartments in the building. Tania Chozet's visit to the building, however, ended when she was placed on a ladder and hauled from her friend's second-floor apartment. Chozet, a graduating senior at Yale University, said she remembered hearing the fire alarm wail for only a minute before it stopped. After hearing sirens outside and seeing smoke envelope the hallway, she started to panic. "At first I thought it was something straight out of the movies," she said. Chozet was staying with Bianca Torrez, a recent Penn graduate. Torrez subletted the apartment from another Penn student and had moved in two days before the fire. Tarbuck was unable to provide an estimate of the number of University students currently leasing apartments in the building. Torrez was working at the University City Science Center when she received a call from her frazzled friend. "[Tania] called me and said the place is burning down," Torrez recalled. Chozet said it was the ringing of the fire engines more than the alarms that clued her in to the blaze. Another tenant Glen Dowell, 27, who works in Jenkintown, also said he remembered that the alarm only rang for a few minutes before it stopped and the building went black. But according to University City Housing Development Manager Bill Grobes, the alarms did not falter and continually rang for the duration of the fire. Hutz noted that this was the first "serious" fire to hit the building, though several smaller ones have occurred in the past.

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