Mount Prospect apartment fire started on the stovetop

One family was displaced Sunday evening after a fire left their Mount Prospect apartment uninhabitable, fire officials said.

At 7:13 p.m., Mount Prospect fire crews responded to reports of a fire at Mount Prospect Greens Apartments on West Algonquin Road, just west of Dempster Street, Battalion Chief Aaron Grandgeorge said.

No injuries were reported in the fire, which was confined within that unit, he said. The cause of the fire is under investigation, Deputy Chief John Dolan said, though it started on the stove top in the apartment's kitchen.

Esmeralda Olea, a resident of that apartment, said she and her husband were not home at the time, though their friend, Julia Thompson, was in their apartment when the fire started.

“I was cooking and went to the bathroom,” Thompson said. “I was letting the grease warm up. I came back and the whole kitchen was on fire. It was the scariest thing. I didn't know what to do.”

The amount of cooking grease helped the fire spread quickly, Dolan said. Firefighters got the flames under control in 20 minutes.

The blaze caused $50,000 in damage to the unit, and a few other units in the building sustained smoke damage.

Grandgeorge said residents of the other apartments in the building were able to return Sunday night.

Dolan advises people to never leave the stove unattended while cooking, and always have a working smoke detector in the kitchen.

• Daily Herald staff photographer Morgan Timms contributed to this report.