Jerome Brown saw the smoke when he walked out of his apartment late Tuesday night.
A man at the bottom of the stairs shouted at the 56-year-old Gainesville resident to call for help.
“My house is on fire,’” the man shouted at Brown.
Brown ran back into his apartment and called 911.
At about 8:30 p.m., Gainesville Fire Rescue responded to the call at an apartment complex at the intersection of Southwest Ninth Street and Southwest Depot Avenue.
The complex is owned by The Arc of Alachua County, which is an organization that provides services to people with mental disabilities.
GFR trucks surrounded the building as firefighters searched through the bottom floor apartment unit.
Residents nearby said they saw smoke coming from the building before the trucks arrived.
Ronald Thomas, one of the firefighters who went into the apartment, said his team extinguished several small fires inside the unit’s bedroom and bathroom.
He said one person, the apartment’s owner, was burned, though he could not give details about the man’s injuries.
Alachua County Fire Rescue took the man to Shands at UF, Thomas said.
The fire affected only one apartment, damaging the bathtub and part of the bedroom.
Once the fires were extinguished, fire crews used fans to blow carbon monoxide out of the apartment.
Thomas said all the apartment’s residents were evacuated.
GFR Fire District Chief James Lovvorn said the cause of the fire was still under investigation.
Contact Chris Alcantara at calcantara@alligator.org.
