Rent payments paused for residents who can’t get inside apartments after massive fire

Frustrations are growing for the more than one hundred people forced out of apartments on Howell Mill Road after a massive fire on Saturday.

Property management at Bell Collier Village Apartments is now suspending rent payments for the hundreds of residents who can’t get inside their building. The management company, Bell Partners is also giving residents $250 per unit to offset the renter’s insurance deductible.

Channel 2′s Christian Jennings was in northwest Atlanta on Monday where it will still be several days before anyone can get their things, even for the folks who live in this section that weren’t as severely damaged due to water damage.

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Ariel Lomax says when someone first told her the roof to her apartment complex was on fire Saturday evening, she didn’t believe it.

“The problem is our alarms go off so much it’s almost like crying wolf. So when someone said there was a fire, I’m like no way because if so the alarms would go off and it took 15 minutes for alarms to go off,” Lomax said.

Atlanta fire investigators are still looking into the cause of Saturday’s fire, but several residents told Jennings they believed it was a man who tried to light a gas grill by putting charcoal on it.

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Several residents’ cars are still in the parking garage and their belongings and medications are still inside their apartments, but they are still not allowed to get these important items.

The property management group bell partners told Channel 2 Action News that they hired a structural engineer to assess the damage. They expect that it will take several days to determine whether re-entry is safe.

Property management also says it’s compiling a list of available apartments in the area to share with residents.

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