A Baltimore teenager has been arrested in connection with a series of five fires set within an hour inside a Pikesville apartment Thursday night, fire officials said.
Firefighters from the Pikesville volunteer as well as the Randallstown and Garrison career stations rescued 11 people from balconies in the rear of the building on the 6900 block of Marsue Drive in the most significant blaze just before 5 p.m. Thursday, said Elise Armacost, afire department spokeswoman. Investigators said the fire was set in a basement storage room and that four smaller fires were set in the building during the preceding hour ? one in a mailbox.
“That was a dead giveaway, when we kept getting called back to fires in different buildings on the same street,” said firefighter Josh Schumer of the Pikesville volunteer company, who helped rescue a family from a second-story balcony.
The fires displaced about a dozen tenants of the garden-apartment complex, but no injuries were reported. The county?s Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Management and the Red Cross is working with the apartment?s management firm to find housing for the victims.
Armacost said a 19-year-old male has been arrested but not yet charged.
Schumer described the rescue as “pretty crazy” and said he arrived to see a resident scale balconies to the second floor and attempt to hand family members down. One elderly female resident refused to climb over the balcony railing, he said, forcing firefighters into the building to be met with intense heat and heavy smoke.
The apartment management is offering a $5,000 reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of those responsible for the fires. Anyone with information is asked to call the Baltimore County Fire Investigation Division at 410-887-4870.
