‘Everything’s burned’: South KC apartment fire destroys units, tenants need to start over

Ian Horn opened the door into his apartment and saw daylight. Studs and rafters in the two-bedroom space were exposed in a way that’s typical only during construction and after destruction. Here, the latter.

A fire raced through his south Kansas City apartment building Monday while he was away for work, and the blaze heavily damaged his and several other units. A phone call notified him of what had happened on his way back.

“How bad is it?” he asked.

“Bad,” came the voice on the other end of the line.

“Bad, bad?” he asked.

The space is unlivable, filled now with the rubble of charred personal items and the burned out apartment.

The blaze damaged 12 units in a building at the Gatehouse Apartments & Townhomes complex, near 116th Street and Winchester Avenue. Eight of the spaces were occupied, and 10 residents requested Red Cross assistance, according to the Kansas City Fire Department.

Battalion Chief Michael Hopkins told The Star Wednesday the cause of the blaze has been classified as “undetermined” as damage was so significant that an exact cause couldn’t be pinpointed.

A message left with the complex’s office wasn’t returned Wednesday. The site is managed by San Francisco-based Landmark Realty , which has a collection of properties in the metro, according to its website.

As Horn picked through the space he shared with a roommate, he found little left to salvage. A trunk that contained some of the jewelry he enjoys creating was spared, but little else survived the inferno.

“Everything’s burned,” he said.

“At first I couldn’t recognize it,” he added. “It was like walking into a completely different place.”

The bodies of two of the home’s three cats – Mazikeen and Loki – were found. Horn assumes Stan Lee, a large ginger cat, also died in the fire, but there’s a part of him that hopes for the unlikely.

Familiar items started to pop out in the residence. A dead aloe vera plant. A melted pool of plastic that was once a TV. An unburned foam sandal. A beanbag chair.

He picked through the rubble and found thousands of Magic: The Gathering cards he’s been collecting for more than 15 years, burned and waterlogged. A cherished hat collection, destroyed. Furniture, clothing, personal items belonging to the two were charred beyond recognition.

The roommates discovered they had only liability insurance and won’t be getting money to replace their possessions that way. A loved one has set up a GoFundMe page to help aid their recovery.

The two roommates have begun to move forward. For now they are living with his roommate’s family member. They’re considering moving into another apartment in the Gatehouse complex, though Horn has some trepidation about the idea of staying.

On Tuesday, the two stopped by KC Pet Project to adopt a new cat, which Horn’s roommate named Linguine Alfredo, and to a card shop to pick up a couple decks of Magic cards.

“I’m 32,” Horn said, “and I’m completely restarting from scratch.”