An early morning fire Tuesday gutted a single-family home in Upper Marlboro, causing no injuries but $300,000 in damage.
The origin and cause of the fire are still under investigation, said Mark Brady, a spokesman for the Prince George's County Fire/EMS Department.
At approximately 1:45 a.m., neighbors reported smoke and fire coming from the two-story house at 13207 Ailesbury Court, in the Foxchase I community. No one was home when it began, Brady said. The number and identity of the occupants was unknown at press time.
Norbert Klusmann, who lives two houses away on Ailesbury Court, said he woke up shortly before 1:45 a.m. and could see the fire spreading up from the first floor. He said it took about 10 minutes for the fire to reach the roof. His wife called 911.
"Fastest fire I've seen," Klusmann said.
He added that he could feel the heat from the fire from out on the street. Klusmann was familiar with one of the residents but said he did not know much about him or the other occupants, except he believes they were renting the house.
Brady said the destroyed house was not equipped with sprinklers.
More than 60 percent of the 139 homes in the Foxchase I community are not equipped with sprinklers because they were built before laws passed requiring them, said Ira Carr, a management agent with Foxchase who lives in the community.
He also did not know the identity of the residents but could confirm that the homeowner, listed as Cho T. Sze in Maryland property records, had been renting out the house for about two years. Sze could not be reached by press time.
Thirty firefighters from Upper Marlboro and nearby communities spent an hour and a half battling the fire, which also caused the siding of two neighboring homes to melt.
Chris Hunt, who lives one block over on Bressler Way, said he awoke around 2 a.m. to what sounded like transformer explosions coming from the direction of the fire. From his window, he said he could see flames rising above the roof from several hundred feet away.
Hunt and two dozen other residents gathered near the house as firefighters combated the fire.
"At that time, it was already fully engulfed," he said, noting that the roof had already collapsed and garage door had been burnt off by the time he arrived shortly after 2 a.m.
