Building codes and resident woes: Black Sands fire recap

It’s one of Lincoln’s largest residential fires in history.

A building at the Black Sands Apartment Complex north of 33rd and Superior is now in rubble.

“At about 4:40 maybe 4:45 heard alarms going off,” resident Melvin Cox said. “A neighbor, someone was pounding on the doors.”

"We woke up to the sound of the alarms, me and my brother did,” Kegan Shryocks said. “We looked out side and there was fire and smoke coming out."

Lincoln Fire and Rescue said the cause is likely a discarded cigarette – disposed on the first or second floor.

Outside storage units acted like a chimney, corralling the flames, allowing them to wildly spread before anyone noticed. There was no outdoor sprinkler system to douse the inferno.

"The lack of sprinklers there most likely allowed the fire to extend the fire to the attic to the eaves and the fire was undetected for quite a while,” LFR Inspector Rick Campos said. “We think it could have been burned up to 20 minutes before it was detected."

The apartment complex was built in 2006, 3 years after the International Fire (IFC) started mandating balcony fire sprinkler systems.

It’s up to each city to adopt the IFC whenever it’s renewed, and Lincoln didn’t do that until after Black Sands – which had passed its most recent inspection – was up and running.

"If it was a sprinkler building it would have been a much different outcome,” LFR Fire Chief Michael Despain said. “This would have been one apartment unit damaged maybe two."

As of Wednesday, it wasn’t immediately clear when the city adopted the IFC ordinance that mandates balcony sprinklers, but it is now required for all new builds, and will be required if Black Sands chooses to reconstruct the building.

That building, number 5027, is a complete loss.

Cox was allowed to go back into his unit to collect necessities. Shryocks and his brother aren’t so lucky.

"They said the top floor is pretty much done,” he said. “I don’t think we are going to be able to come back in. Pretty much everything that we had there is just gone basically."

The fire caused an estimated $2.5 million in damage — $2 million for the building and $500,000 in possessions.

Campos says at this point, its unlikely any criminal charges will come from the blaze.