Incident Type: 
Smoke Scare
Dispatch: 
Monday, February 27, 2017 - 7:04pm
Arrival: 
Monday, February 27, 2017 - 7:10pm
Address: 
Moorland Road
Madison, WI 53706
Narrative: 

A Moorland Road woman came home to find firefighters ventilating her apartment Monday night.
 
Ladder Company 6, Medic 6, and several other MFD crews were called to the building when a neighbor noticed smoke in the hallway, heard no alarms sounding, and couldn't identify which apartment the smoke was coming from.
 
Ladder 6 entered the building with master keys stored in the building's Knox Box key vault and found their way to a basement-level apartment. Nobody answered the door when firefighters knocked, so they used the keys from the Knox Box again.
 
The apartment was very smoky as firefighters approached the kitchen and found an unidentifiable “burned substance” inside a smoking pan on the stove. The stove was turned off, and the pan was taken outside.
 
When the occupant returned home, she told firefighters she went to visit a neighbor for a short time but forgot she left the stove on. She said she likes to heat cinnamon in water to add a pleasant aroma to her apartment.  
 
Given the amount of smoke that had been produced, firefighters believed the smoke detectors should have activated. That neither of the two detectors did so raised some concerns. The occupant assured the crew she would contact her property managers to have this issue addressed right away.
 
Thanks to a prompt 911 call by an observant neighbor, and the availability of master keys in an accessible key vault, there were no damages or injuries as a result of this incident.

Posted 02/28/2017 - 9:12am
Contacts: 

Cynthia Schuster (Public Information Officer)