Elaina Leonard stood in a driveway slippery with fire-hose ice and looked with disbelief at her destroyed apartment.
"I don't have anything now," she said, wiping the tears from her cheeks. "I'm looking right through my living room. There's nothing there, not even a couch. Everything you work for is where you live. I have to start all over again."
Leonard, 22, was one of about 80 residents displaced by a four-alarm fire that roared through part of the Berkshires at Satyr Hill apartment complex in Carney shortly after 1 a.m. yesterday, wiping out 24 units and drawing 150 firefighters. The blaze was not declared under control until almost five hours later.
Two residents - a woman and her teenage daughter - suffered minor injuries, said Battalion Chief Ed Watkins of the Baltimore County Fire Department. The woman was burned on her face when she opened a door and was met by a wall of flame, he said. The girl suffered from smoke inhalation, and both were treated at a hospital and released.
"It's remarkable that there weren't more," Watkins said, noting the severity of the fire and the speed with which it appeared to have begun.
A firefighter broke his arm when he slipped on ice, a particular hazard given the frigid weather and the volume of water, much of which froze almost immediately, that was poured onto the blaze.
Two people were rescued from the rear of the burning three-story building by firefighters from the first engine to arrive at the complex on Spindrift Circle, just off Lowell Ridge Road, at 1:16 a.m.
The firefighters reported "significant fire" as they pulled up. Within 40 minutes, incident commanders had raised their response to four alarms.
Authorities later said that all residents had been accounted for and that those whose homes were ruined would be relocated to vacant apartments in the complex or, temporarily, to the Comfort Inn nearby on Loch Raven Boulevard. Red Cross and Baltimore County Emergency Management officials spoke with displaced residents at both locations to ensure that their immediate needs were met.
Watkins, the battalion chief, said at midmorning that investigators had taken photographs and samples from the wrecked structure and concluded that, while still under investigation, the fire's origins were not suspicious. He said the owners of the building decided almost immediately to pull down what remained of it, and demolition equipment was in place by noon.
