What could have been a tragic fire displacing dozens of people left one woman looking for a new residence, but reunited with her cat after the Dearborn Heights Fire Department quickly put out a kitchen fire May 12. With a response time of less than four minutes, despite being out of the station on other business when the call came in, the fire department responded to a second-story apartment in the 2600 block of Westphall, and doused a fire within 10 minutes of receiving the call, Fire Marshall Max Mitts said. “It was just a careless cooking incident,” he said. “The resident left a pan unattended on the stove.”
The fire had spread up into the hood system from the stove and could have spread through shared rafter spaces, but the firefighters managed to get it put out quickly and stop most damage to other units.