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Woman dies in fire at apartment

The cause of the blaze is being investigated by state and local authorities.

By JONATHAN ABEL, Times Staff Writer
Published October 10, 2007

ADVERTISEMENT [Jim Damaske | Times] A Pinellas County Sheriff's crime scene investigator documents the scene of a fatal apartment fire at 223 Dolphin Point.

CLEARWATER - A fire killed one woman Tuesday afternoon in an apartment complex at 223 Dolphin Point on Island Estates, according to fire officials.

Officials withheld the victim's name until her family could be informed.

The property manager found the victim with the help of other people in the complex and called 911 about 2:22 p.m., fire officials said.

The fire was in Unit 9 of the 10-unit, two-story complex and had already extinguished itself by the time firefighters arrived, reported public safety spokeswoman Elizabeth Daly-Watts.

The cause of the fire was under investigation by city police and fire, as well as by the state Fire Marshal's Office and an investigator from Palm Harbor Fire Rescue.

The building where the fire took place is in the shadow of Dolphin Cove condominium tower, where a fifth-floor fire June 28, 2002, killed two residents and injured three firefighters.

In the Dolphin Cove fire - the Clearwater fire department's most serious firefighting incident in decades, if not ever - firefighters took 28 minutes to hit the blaze with water. A St. Petersburg Times review later found that firefighters didn't follow fundamental, accepted rules of firefighting and violated their own guidelines.

Among other things, firefighters at Dolphin Cove connected their hoses to a standpipe down the hall from the fire, not to a standpipe in the stairwell below it, as is the accepted practice. The hallway pipe had no water because a ground-level valve was turned off.

That fire led the city to make changes in the department's organization, training and staffing. On Tuesday, Clearwater firefighters hooked up to a hydrant working properly, Daly-Watts said.

[Last modified October 9, 2007, 21:22:03]