By Charles Agar – Post Independent

ASPEN, Colorado — A fire gutted the Castle Ridge Apartments in Aspen late Tuesday night and raged into the early morning Wednesday.

One cat perished from smoke inhalation, but all 17 residents escaped a fast-moving blaze that fire officials suspect broke out on the balcony of a second-floor unit in the 100 building of the complex at about 11:30 p.m.

Witnesses reported seeing flames as high as 40 feet and from as far away as the roundabout.

All 10 apartments in the building, one of eight apartment blocks in the Castle Ridge Apartments adjacent to Aspen Valley Hospital, were destroyed, fire officials said.

“I’m in disbelief,” Christina Monaco said Wednesday.

Monaco said she was asleep when she awoke to the smell of smoke coming from an adjacent apartment.

“I couldn’t see flames but it was just really bright,” she said.

She said she opened her bedroom door and her living room was thick with smoke, so she grabbed her cell phone and ran through the room out of the apartment.

“It just happened so quickly,” Monaco said.

Firefighters with the Aspen Volunteer Fire Department were on scene within minutes of the 911 call, but the blaze moved quickly, according to Rick Balentine, deputy fire chief.

With the help of a ladder truck from Snowmass, firefighters had the blaze under control by approximately 2 a.m., Balentine said.

Normally a heavy sleeper, Monaco, a hairdresser in Aspen, said she was grateful she was able to get out, but her 6-year-old cat, Gato, was not so lucky.

The feline was acting funny shortly after she went to bed at 11 p.m., Monaco said.

“I wonder if maybe he smelled something or knew something,” she said.

Firefighters retrieved the animal from the flames, but attempts to resuscitate failed.
Neighbors said the fire could have been worse without the help of Mark Skluzacek, a mason and longtime valley resident who lives in a neighboring building.

Skluzacek first spotted the balcony fire while walking home from the bus stop near the hospital.

“It looked like a little fire you’d see in a Weber grill when you first light it,” Skluzacek said. “Then I realized that it was a fire … All of the sudden I said, ‘I gotta do something.’”

He said he quickly dialed 911, then ran to alert neighbors.

“He is a hero,” said Maxine Jacobs, resident manager of the Castle Ridge Apartments. “He woke all of those people up. He raced over there and pounded on all of those doors. That man saved lives.”

Said Skluzacek: “If the doors were locked, I started pounding; if they came out I said, ‘Get out there’s a fire.’ I’m surprised there’s nobody dead. It was just a few seconds and then [the fire] went across the roof.”

He stopped when the smoke became too thick, he said.

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