Questions and Rumors Swirl As Residents Return to Homes

A day after a fire gutted an eighth-floor apartment and left a man critically injured, the residents of Foster House Apartments in Northwest Washington congregated in hallways to trade questions and rumors about the blaze.

"I don't know anything about what happened up there," manager Elizabeth Broadnax said yesterday, sitting in her first-floor office and pointing up. "I don't even know his name, just that he wasn't a resident here."

The D.C. fire department has not released the injured man's name and is investigating the cause of the fire at the building at Ninth Street and Rhode Island Avenue, spokesman Alan Etter said. The city's Arson Task Force is joining the investigation, as it does for most fires.

The 38-year-old man, rescued by firefighters from an eighth-floor window, remains in critical condition at Washington Hospital Center with third-degree burns on 75 percent of his body.

Broadnax said the man lived with a woman who rented the corner apartment but declined to identify her. Yesterday morning, construction crews boarded up the apartment, and management officials assessed the damage.

No other units were damaged by the fire, Broadnax said, and residents of other apartments are safely back home. Three eighth-floor residents stayed at a nearby motel Saturday night, arranged by the American Red Cross, because the fire department had closed the floor to clean and investigate.

There is smoke and water damage in the eighth-floor hallway, as well as a broken window on the opposite end of the floor that firefighters had to smash through to circulate air.

"They put the fire out very quickly, before it could spread to other apartments," Broadnax said. "It could have been much worse."