A fire tore through a fourth-floor apartment at Indian Hills Colony in Euclid Friday night, sending one resident to the hospital with burns and smoke inhalation while several neighbors were treated for smoke exposure at the scene. Firefighters responded at about 9:30 p.m. to the six-story building at 1490 East 193rd St., where crews found an active blaze and launched a search of the unit where it started.
During that search, crews located one person inside the apartment where the fire began, according to cleveland.com. That resident was pulled out and handed off to emergency medical personnel, then taken to MetroHealth Medical Center with burns and smoke inhalation. As of Saturday afternoon, the person's condition remained unknown.
The fire was confirmed to be on the fourth floor of the six-story building, according to Cleveland 19 News. Several additional residents were evaluated and treated at the scene for smoke inhalation.
Multiple Departments Called In to Clear the Smoke
Three other area fire departments helped Euclid firefighters remove smoke throughout the six-story building, working alongside Euclid police, the department's report notes. The scale of that response underscores how smoke can spread through a high-rise's hallways and stairwells well beyond the apartment where a fire ignites.
The cause of Friday's fire remains under investigation by the Euclid Fire Department's fire investigation unit, and no determination had been released as of Saturday. Investigators have not said whether the blaze originated from cooking, electrical issues, or another source.
Indian Hills Has Seen Fire Trouble Before
Friday's fire is not the first time Indian Hills has drawn emergency crews. A separate fire at the Indian Hills Apartments destroyed a unit overnight in a 2023 incident, with the cause also placed under investigation by the Euclid Fire Department, according to News 5 Cleveland. That same fire prompted crews to be dispatched at 2:31 a.m. to a unit in the 1500 block of East 91st Street after reports that the sixth floor was on fire, the outlet reported.
A more serious fire struck the Indian Hills Senior Community in October 2021, when firefighters found a 57-year-old woman dead in a hallway outside an apartment and two other occupants suffered smoke inhalation, according to the News-Herald. That investigation suggested unattended cooking may have caused the blaze. It is not established whether that 2021 incident took place at the same building or property as Friday's fire.
For now, the focus in Euclid is on the condition of the resident hospitalized at MetroHealth and on determining what sparked Friday night's fire. Euclid Fire Department investigators have not released a timeline for when that determination might come.
