Germantown police and fire personnel, as well as on-site staffers at The Village of Germantown, responded to a fire in a single 2nd-floor apartment in the independent living building of the community shortly 5 p.m. Sunday.
Responding to a fire alarm, a Village staffer entered the smoke-filled apartment and quickly extinguished the flames. A second staffer, a trained Emergency Medical Technician, searched the apartment and located a single 82-year-old female resident, who was immediately taken downstairs to a waiting ambulance.
The resident was transported to the Regional One Health Medical Center, formerly known as The Med, where she succumbed to her injuries today, shortly after 1 a.m. Identification of the victim is being withheld at this time pending the notification of family.
The cause of the fire has not yet been determined. Germantown police and fire investigators remained on the scene overnight pending an investigation.
While the fire was contained to the living room of a single apartment, a handful of residents from several adjacent apartments were relocated to spend the night with friends or family because of smoke or water damage to their residences from automated sprinklers. Remediation and restoration efforts are already underway.
The Village of Germantown is 15 years old and is home to about 330 residents in independent living, assisted living, on-site healthcare and memory care communities. This is the community’s first fire-related death, ever.
