Families displaced by a fire at a Southside apartment complex returned Sunday and sifted through the debris.
On Saturday night, flames erupted from a building at Bentley Green Apartments.
Joey Soares tells Action News Jax he was inside one of the units with his daughter when the fire started.
"All of a sudden we started hearing people scream outside so I opened the back patio door and it was just a huge ball of white smoke,” he said.
Firefighters say a stove fire spread quickly through several units in the building.
Soares never heard the fire alarm going off.
“I just immediately grabbed my daughter and ran out. I didn’t really think too much until we got out," he recalled.
While Soares and his little girl made it out unscathed, he can’t say the same for their belongings.
Charred debris is all that’s left.
Neighbors describe similar devastation to their apartments and are just as shaken up.
“I broke down crying. It’s so devastating. The whole building is gone. You can look up through the ceiling and see the sky,” Laurie Peace, who also lives in the building, said in describing the scene.
Despite the damage, people and pets are all OK. The tenants say that’s what matters most.
Cox Media Group
