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A Landover woman who was smoking a cigarette while using an oxygen tank is alleged to be the cause of an early morning apartment fire Monday that hospitalized her and resulted in thousands of dollars in damage, according to Prince George's County fire officials.

Forty firefighters responded about 3:30 a.m. to a blaze in a terrace-level apartment at a three-story garden-style apartment building in the 3400 block of Dodge Park Road, according to a fire department release. The unit is inside the Kings Square Apartments complex.

Firefighters extinguished the fire in 30 minutes and evacuated 40 residents from the building, according to the release.

The woman, who was in her 50s, was last listed in "fair condition" in a local hospital for smoke and burn injuries, according to the release. Her current condition was unknown as of Wednesday afternoon, said Mark Brady, a Prince George's County Fire/EMS Department spokesman. He did not know why the woman was on oxygen.

No one else was injured in the fire, which caused $25,000 in damage, Brady said in an e-mail to The Gazette.

The woman who was injured has been permanently displaced. A second resident in a separate unit adjacent to hers was temporarily displaced, but that unit was in "livable shape" and the tenant has returned to the apartment, said Arnold Berlin, one of the owners of Kings Square Apartments, on Wednesday.

The woman believed to have started the fire will not be given a vacant unit because of her alleged responsibility, but she does own renters insurance, Berlin said.

County fire department officials told apartment management the woman had seven oxygen tanks in her apartment, Berlin said.

"Fires are very, very unfortunately a part of the apartment business," he said. "They happen occasionally, and we are very happy that everything worked properly, that nobody was really hurt as far as we understand, and we try to do the best we can for all our tenants."

Neighbor Theresa Bazemore, 58, who lives above the unit where the fire started, said Monday afternoon she had been getting ready for her work day at the National Air and Space Museum in the District where she is a building service worker when she heard a woman below her yell for help.

Bazemore said she thought someone fell down the steps but saw no one when she looked out of her door peephole.

"She said, ‘Could you call the fire department?'" Bazemore said. "I said, ‘Is anybody down there with you?' She said ‘No.'"

Bazemore said she then noticed the building start to fill with smoke and pulled the building's fire alarm before knocking on doors to alert other residents to flee the building. She said she did not know the woman personally.

"I was so scared for her," Bazemore said.

Bazemore, who has lived in four different units in the Kings Square Apartment complex over 18 years, went to stay with a sister in Upper Marlboro and came back Monday afternoon to check for any damage. Her windows have since been replaced by apartment maintenance.

"This is the first time anything like this has happened to me on this property," Bazemore said.

Resident Jerome Stroble, 50, who lives two floors above the apartment fire, was already awake at the time of the fire getting ready for a food delivery job in Baltimore. He said firefighters knocked his door in as they alerted people to vacate the building.

"It just happened real quick," Stroble said. "All you got to do is react and get out."

E-mail Natalie McGill at nmcgill@gazette.net.