Officials Believe Cigarette To Blame For Midtown Tulsa House Fire

Fire crews believe a residence fire at 13th and Quaker was started by an improperly discarded cigarette.

The good news is everyone made it out of the house alive. It's not clear just yet if the house, which is divided up into apartments, is a total loss.

Firefighters got the brunt of the fire knocked out fast, but patches of fire continued to flare up for at least an hour.

The fire was intense. Cell phone video sent to us by a viewer shows the second floor engulfed in flames.

Firefighters used water hoses and a ladder truck to get the fire under control.

Through the investigation, they now  believe a cigarette thrown out of a window caught the second-floor deck on fire and it spread.

They say the high winds we've had all day further fueled the flames.

“The roof was all just in flames, everything was just falling on the ground, and we had to tell them to get out because it was coming so fast. It was horrible,” witness Casey Wright said.

The fire captain tells us the age and  design of the homemade it hard for firefighters to fight because it was hard to figure out where the different staircases led.

Only one of the apartments was occupied when the fire started. Neighbors say the house was built in the 1920s and it is one of the best looking homes in the neighborhood. They are happy no one was hurt but sad to see it catch fire.

"They have kept this house looking so pretty, and it just shocked me when I looked up there and saw,” witness Linda Hicks said. “They’ve done a lot of work on this house, and I don't know; I’m [gonna] be really upset because this house is gone.”