A pre-dawn fire tore through the back of a condominium building on Nicklaus Drive in Suffolk early Sunday, trapping a child and two adults inside before firefighters pulled all three out through upper windows using ground ladders. All three victims were taken to area hospitals with serious but non-life-threatening injuries, and fire officials say the blaze had blocked the building's interior exits, forcing crews into a riskier rescue method.
Suffolk Fire & Rescue crews were called to the 2000 block of Nicklaus Drive around 5:12 a.m. and arrived within five minutes to find heavy flames coming from the back of the building, according to 13News Now. With flames blocking normal exits, crews raised ground ladders to pull the child and two adults from upper windows. Firefighters also searched the building after a report that another person might be missing, but found no one else inside.
Why the Fire Jumped to Three Alarms
Officials escalated the response to three alarms specifically because the heavy flames threatened to spread, or impinge, onto neighboring attached condo units while ground-ladder rescues were still underway, according to a Suffolk Fire & Rescue Instagram post
. That threat of fire extending unit to unit is a particular hazard in tightly built, attached multi-family housing, where flames can travel quickly along shared walls and rooftops. The fire was ultimately brought under control around 6:28 a.m., roughly 76 minutes after the initial call.
Mutual aid units from neighboring Chesapeake and Portsmouth assisted Suffolk Fire & Rescue crews during the operation, per the same 13News Now report. That cross-jurisdictional backup was made possible by a regional Southside Hampton Roads CAD-to-CAD automated dispatch system that links fire departments in Suffolk, Norfolk, Portsmouth, Virginia Beach, and Chesapeake, according to the City of Suffolk Department of Fire & Rescue. The shared dispatch network allows adjacent municipalities to quickly deploy units and backfill stations across city lines during major incidents.
A Neighbor's Scramble to Warn Others
As smoke and embers spread through the complex, a neighboring resident named Jeff alerted his own household, rescued pets, and then went door-to-door warning other residents to evacuate, the station's report notes. The 2000 block of Nicklaus Drive sits within Harbour View, a master-planned multi-family and golf community in northern Suffolk near the Nansemond River, according to a listing from RE/MAX Alliance. The dense layout typical of such developments can allow smoke and fire to spread quickly between adjoining units, raising the stakes for both residents and responding crews.
The cause of Sunday's fire has not been released, and fire officials have not disclosed updated conditions for the three hospitalized victims. It is the latest in a string of multi-family residential fires Suffolk Fire & Rescue has handled over the past year. In May, a working townhouse fire on Old College Drive displaced two adults and a child, and in February, a two-story apartment fire on Holladay Street displaced three adults after flames extended through interior walls into the attic, according to the City of Suffolk Department of Fire & Rescue.
A Department Covering Virginia's Largest City
Suffolk Fire & Rescue has been led by Fire Chief Michael J. Barakey since October 2018, following his career as a district chief with the Virginia Beach Fire Department, per the City of Suffolk. As of 2025, the department employs more than 310 professional firefighters across nine stations, deploying 11 engine companies and three ladder companies to serve over 97,000 residents. That stretched coverage reflects the scale of the city itself: Suffolk is the largest city in Virginia by land area, spanning 430 square miles of urban, suburban, and rural terrain, a geography that makes mutual aid agreements like the one used Sunday essential for large multi-alarm fires.
