An early morning fire woke up several neighbors in northwest Baltimore.
No one was hurt, but the flames destroyed two houses.
The fire broke out around 2 am Tuesday morning at the corner of Garrison Blvd. and Duvall Avenue.
A charred shell is all that was left of a vacant house at the corner, but the fire didn't stop there.
The flames spread to another building next door, devastating the people who called it home.
Garrison House property manager Christopher Monroe said “I just left here at 7 o’clock last night and everything was fine, and then hours later I get a phone call saying that they property’s on fire.”
Garrison House is a place that helps people get back on their feet, to find a job, or provide a place to live.
“It’s going to be even harder because now you’ve got to start over, you’ve got to get new clothes, you’ve got to find a new place to live, the holidays is coming up, who wants to go through a fire the week before Thanksgiving,” Monroe said.
One staff member at Garrison House, who only wanted to give her first name of Tiffany said “people come through this office every single day, and we don’t know how we’re going to serve them. This is tragic, for the business, for our tenants and everything.”
Many of their plans now up in smoke as a lot of time and money had been spent fixing up the Garrison House since July.
“The property was fully renovated on the inside. This is a nine-bedroom house. So everything is done, from the carpet, to the ceilings to the paint. Everything was already just done over, the kitchen floors were just put in. We just finished the last finishing touches a couple weeks ago,” Monroe said.
A business destroyed by fire, tenants out of a home, and employees without a place to work.
“Good thing we have over 500 properties, we can place the tenants into a new property, so that’s a good thing. They just have to start over for their belongings,” Monroe said.
“We need to find out exactly what happened at this unit today because it doesn't make any sense that this building has burned down our business here today,” Tiffany said.
