In Milwaukee, Authorities say that a fire at a Milwaukee apartment block with multiple floors on May 11 killed at least four people and hurt four more.
According to Milwaukee Fire Chief Aaron Lipski, first rescuers got to the four-story building in the western part of the city at 7:45 a.m. the next day. About 22 fire cars and 8 ladder trucks from all over Milwaukee County, including units from Wauwatosa and West Allis, came to the scene of the fire.
Lipski said that about 30 people were saved by ladders or by firemen being dragged out. Calls to 911 about the five-alarm apartment fire also said that some people jumped from the second floor to get out of the building.
Lipski said it looked like the fire began in a general area of the building, not in a specific unit. It spread to flats and floors above.
Lipski says that four people died in the fire, but their names have not been made public. Four others were in critical condition, and it wasn’t clear how many people were hurt seriously or what started the fire.
Lipski said that the hurt people were taken to nearby hospitals.
Many emergency response units had left the scene by 1 p.m., but police and Red Cross workers stayed to talk to people who had to leave their homes and give them food and blankets. Lipski said that the fire department is looking into what happened and has asked the state fire controller to come to the scene.
The fire chief said that the 38-story building with 85 units did not have standpipes or sprinklers. It was constructed in 1968. Lipski says that buildings built before 1974 that met certain requirements for size, shape, measurements, and occupancy did not have to have sprinklers.
“You make absolutely no mistake: That dramatically impacts the survivability in this building once a fire starts,” said Lipski.
Later, he told the USA TODAY Network’s Milwaukee Journal Sentinel that spark plugs were in a “small parking area on the first floor” of the apartment building but not in the living area.
City records show that the sprinklers in the parking structure got them a building code violation warning in April 2024. From May 2024 to March 2025, the city did nine follow-up checks, and records from the Department of Neighbourhood Services showed that the violation notice was not resolved.
After a check on April 22, the department wrote down that the violation had been fixed. The notes from the tester showed that the five-year and yearly checks were done.
The Journal Sentinel asked the building’s owner and the Department of Neighbourhood Services for comments, but they did not reply right away.