Sunrise Beach fire destroys 10 condos

A fire late Sunday ripped through 10 condos on the Lake of the Ozarks, fire officials said Monday.

Firefighters arrived at the 11 West Condos at about 9 p.m. to find one building in flames.

Sunrise Beach Fire Chief Dennis Reilly said there were no fatalities or injuries. Reilly said a fire wall provided some protection for part of the building.

However, many of the units were appeared to be uninhabitable.

“By the time we got here most of the people had already self-evacuated the building,” Reilly said.

Reilly said it was one of the biggest fires he had worked.

It took about two and a half hours to contain the fire.

“When you get a wood frame, multi-occupancy building like this burning, it’s got a lot of fuel in it,” Reilly said.

He said it was difficult to contain the fire because of the time it took to run hose lines up to the fire from the lake. He said it takes people to run the machines as well as hose down the fire.

“It was a complicated operation. We had a lot of moving parts,” Reilly said.

He said many fire departments were at the scene and the help was crucial.

Reilly said one man was instrumental to saving people’s lives and getting them out of harms way, Brad Gilchrist.

Gilchrist, who lives in the building, said his wife saw smoke and called 911 and he ran out to help evacuate the building.

“I raced down here because I knew there were some residents here full-time,” Gilchrist said.

He said he saw the pitch get engulfed by flames and he worked quickly to go from unit to unit, evacuating the building of nine people.

He said many of the building residents are retired and elderly.

“They knew when I told them, I said we got to go, we don’t have time to think about grabbing anything, let’s just get out of this building,” Gilchrist said.

He said when he got everyone out, the complex rose up in flames.

The fire department is investigating the cause of the fire. Reilly said they think they know how the fire began, but cannot release the information until the investigation is complete.

“There’s nothing that tells us or indicates to us that this was anything other than an accidental fire,” Reilly said.

Others neighbors said they saw smoke coming from the balcony of one of the condos.