JACKSONVILLE BEACH, Fla. — At least six people have been displaced after a fire tore through a mixed-use building on 3rd Street South in Jacksonville Beach on Sunday afternoon.
The fire happened around 3:30 p.m. and involved a building that housed tenants from three apartments with a tattoo shop on the second floor and a smoke shop on the first.
Stacy Rogers, who lives in an upstairs apartment with her husband, daughter, and two young granddaughters, said the couple discovered the fire after her husband went outside to take out the trash.
“My husband went down to take out the trash, and when he went down, I was going to help him,” Rogers said.
The couple then heard what Rogers described as a popping sound before noticing an electrical smell.
“We both started smelling the electrical smell, and I’m like, what is that? What is that?” she recalled.
Moments later, Rogers said her husband realized the apartment was on fire.
“He just screamed,” Rogers said. “He’s like, ‘the apartment’s on fire!”
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Rogers said her daughter and two granddaughters, ages 3 and 7, were upstairs.
“I ran up to get my daughter and the grandbabies and the dog,” she said. “And then [my husband] ran up to the tattoo shop, started beating on [the door], and told them that it was on fire.”
According to Rogers, at least four clients were inside the tattoo shop when the fire broke out.
She says the fire started on the building’s first floor, and her friend, Charles McNinch, who owns Black Label Tattoo on the second floor, lost two cats and a bird in the fire.
“He lost, I mean, beloved animals that he’s had for a long time,” Rogers said. “His business, it’s a wreck — he’s done.”
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Despite the destruction, Rogers said she’s just grateful the fire was discovered when it was.
“If he wouldn’t have been down taking that trash out, it would have been devastated,” Rogers said.
Rogers told Action News Jax she believes faulty wiring caused the fire, but Action News Jax has not been able to independently confirm the cause with the Jacksonville Fire and Rescue Department.
“We’ve complained, we’ve done everything,” Rogers said. “No smoke detectors in any of the places.”
She says they’ve been looking to move for the last six months because they “knew things were just not good.”
Action News Jax was unable to contact the property owner and therefore couldn’t give them a chance to respond to the accusations.
We’ll update this article with those details when we receive them.
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