Tenant Homeless After Apartment Fire

A Camarillo woman was left homeless Thursday after an early morning fire gutted her Lantana Street apartment unit.

“The apartment was a total loss,” said Ventura County Fire Department spokesman Joe Luna.

Luna said investigators have not determined the cause of the fire, which broke out at about 1:25 a.m. and caused $90,000 in damage.

Officials with the American Red Cross were assisting Barbara Prior, who lived alone in the apartment, with finding a place to live.

The blaze started in the first-floor bedroom of Prior’s apartment, but firefighters contained it before it spread to other units, Luna said. Prior was awake when the fire broke out in the 12-unit building. Five engine crews were dispatched to the complex in the 500 block of Lantana Street.

On Wednesday night, a fire in an overheated kiln house destroyed the building and damaged an adjacent home in the 300 block of Court Avenue in Ventura, officials said. The blaze caused $16,000 in damage to the kiln house and the home before firefighters extinguished it.

Four engine companies and one truck company responded to the fire, which broke out at 11:54 p.m., said Ventura Fire Department Battalion Chief Neil Gedney.

“Flames were lapping onto the house located to the west, and siding and eaves were beginning to burn,” Gedney said.