A weekend fire tore through a third-floor bedroom at the Residences at Congressional Village on Halpine Road in Rockville on Saturday, sending one older woman to the hospital and pushing several families out of their homes, at least for now. Firefighters said a few intense minutes of work, combined with the building’s automatic sprinkler system, kept the flames from racing through the complex, but water and smoke damage still left people from roughly eight units looking for temporary housing.
Montgomery County Fire and Rescue Service spokesperson Pete Piringer posted on X that crews arrived to find flames coming from a third-floor bedroom and that the sprinkler system had already activated, helping to hold the fire in check, according to DC News Now. Firefighters quickly extinguished the blaze and took an older woman to a hospital with non-life-threatening injuries, the outlet reported.
Response And Displacement
Crews were able to knock down the flames before they spread further through the building, but the combination of firefighting efforts and activated sprinklers left significant water and smoke damage. Residents of about eight units were displaced while building management worked to set up temporary housing, according to The MoCo Show. Officials did not immediately release a cause of the fire, and investigators are expected to examine the affected unit to determine how it started.
Where It Happened
The Residences at Congressional Village is a mid-rise apartment complex listed at 198 Halpine Road, advertising one- to three-bedroom units on its management site. Property listings describe it as a four-story mid-rise, a detail that highlights how the working sprinkler system and a rapid fire response likely prevented damage from spreading more extensively, according to data on LoopNet and the community’s management site Allegiant-Carter.
Montgomery County Fire & Rescue had no immediate update on when displaced residents might be able to return, and local agencies are coordinating assistance for those affected, officials told DC News Now. Anyone with information about the incident or residents in need of help were directed to contact building management or Montgomery County emergency services.
