Firefighters battle icy cold conditions; homeless community seeks shelter
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KANSAS CITY (KMBC) — Fire destroyed an empty two-story apartment building in northeast Kansas City and badly damaged a neighboring home Monday.
A Kansas City firefighter also had a slip and fall accident on the ice, suffering minor injuries.
The fire broke out just before 7 a.m. Monday in the 3800 block of East 12th Terrace.
Neighbor Ronnie Tinsley said he’s been complaining to the city about homeless people camping in the vacant building.
Now, his neighboring home is uninhabitable after he said he had just replaced his roof.
“Particularly when the temperatures drop like this, you know, people who do not have anywhere else to go, they’re seeking shelter in someplace warm to go. And then when they try to stay warm, we end up having an incident like this one,” said Battalion Chief Michael Hopkins with the Kansas City Fire Department. “I’m not sure what the cause of this one was. There’s so much damage that’s probably going to be hard to determine.”
Hopkins said KCFD battles 200 to 220 fires at empty structures each year, with most of them residential.
On Monday, the homeless advocacy group Neighbor2Neighbor served breakfast and lunch and gave out hand warmers and clothing.
That ministry at St. Paul’s Presbyterian Church closes its doors at noon.
It means people like Brent Robinson on the Martin Luther King Jr. Day holiday had to find somewhere else to stay warm.
“It’s very challenging, every time. Because of the holidays, people know that there are a few places, maybe two or three places open,” he said.
Neighbor 2 Neighbor Director Greg Parr has faced the same problem.
Now, he’s trying to help people get their lives together.
“We’re supposed to feed the least of these. And at one time, I was one of the least of these and homeless myself and lived in abandoned houses for three and a half years and arrested 97 times,” he said.
Reached by phone, Tony Gray, the owner of the burned down apartment building, said he’s invested $75,000 to $100,000 in the property to fix it and make it secure.
But he said problems with vandalism have persisted.
City records show the property was granted a rehab permit on Feb. 1, 2024.
Those records also show a city inspector has been to the property more than a dozen times in less than three years.
Problems noted in those records include trash in the backyard, graffiti, peeling paint and tall grass.
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