UNION CITY, Ga. — A man says it was like a nightmare when he woke up and found smoke seeping into his apartment in Union City.
His building at the Evergreen Commons apartments caught fire at 9 a.m. on Tuesday, sending tenants running to safety.
Tenant Rey Takang told Channel 2′s Tom Jones he awoke to people screaming.
“People yelling at me, ‘Get out. Get out. Get out the house,’ I’m in complete disbelief,” Takang said.
He says, fortunately, his fire alarms also woke him up. That’s when he saw smoke seeping into his unit.
“And I opened the door to see what’s going on, and the whole thing was on fire. Fire, fire everywhere,” he described.
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A tenant shared video of the flames shooting from the breezeway of the building. Firefighters arrived and began spraying water on the building.
The fire destroyed the roof of the four units.
“Well, the fire evidently, you can see, got up into the roof, and started burning the roof,” Deputy Fire Chief Larry Knowles said.
Firefighters asked the City of South Fulton and Fairburn to send crews to help battle the fire.
“Anytime you got an apartment with multiple lives, you’re gonna respond with everything you can,” Chief Knowles explained.
Knowles says everyone got out safely, including Takang.
“It felt like it was a nightmare or something,” he said.
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Takang is happy he didn’t lose his life. But, he believes he lost everything inside his unit aside from his cat.
As he ran to get out, he did suffer a minor injury when debris fell on him.
“I got a mark right there,” he said, showing Jones the mark on the back of his shoulder.
Takang says it’s something he will never forget.
“I didn’t have time to think. I put on these sweatpants, put my shoes on, grabbed my cat and I ran out the door.”
The deputy fire chief says an investigation is underway to determine what caused the fire. He said the Red Cross is speaking with tenants who may need help.
Chief Knowles also said all the fire alarms and sprinklers worked, and that helped prevent the loss of life.
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