Residents salvage what they can after blaze at Lomita apartment building

After flames ripped through an apartment complex overnight in Lomita, destroying half of the units and displacing several residents, the president of the owner’s association says they plan on rebuilding.

The blaze was first reported by the Los Angeles County Fire Department at 6:50 p.m. Saturday. It was initially called a second alarm fire before it was upgraded to a third.

Authorities said it was a kitchen fire in one of the units that ignited much of the building in the 2100 block of Palos Verdes Drive North, the heat so intense that a portion of the condo building’s second floor collapsed.

“It’s horrible, like what happened? How is it from here to the very end? It torched the whole thing,” neighbor Rose Pskus told KTLA’s Carlos Saucedo. “It’s just crazy.”

Pskus, who lives across the street, was looking for her elderly neighbor who lives in the building.

“I haven’t heard from her,” she said. “I hope she’s okay. She lives around this area. I hope it’s not one of these units. I hope she’s safe.”

Out of the 25 units in the apartment complex, half of them were destroyed in the massive inferno.

It took 150 firefighters to knock the flames out, but there were continued flareups overnight. On Easter Sunday, fire crews spent the day assessing the damage while escorting residents inside the building to grab important belongings.

“We went in and gathered our important papers and anything else we could get, clothing and stuff. That’s about it,” Paul Funk told KTLA.

Funk, president of the Vista Verde Owners’ Association, said the plan is to rebuild.

“So, this happened a day before Easter Sunday, we’re going to resurrect our Vista Verde complex,” he said. “In seven or eight months, we’ll be back in and better than we were before.”

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Fortunately, no one was injured during the fire, but officials say that cleanup is going to take some time because it was a challenging blaze.

“It was a pretty difficult fire and essentially it’s because of the narrow roadways we have,” Craig Little with the L.A. County Fire Department said. “We couldn’t get the max amount of firefighting equipment because of narrow roadways. That put a damper on things. “

The Red Cross is helping residents displaced by the fire find temporary shelter.

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