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People jumped from the sixth floor of a 25-story residential high-rise in Los Angeles on Wednesday morning after a fire enveloped the floor, according to the city’s fire department.
The fire broke out before 8:30 a.m. local time in the Brentwood neighborhood, just hours after firefighters quelled a “major emergency” fire at a vacant commercial building downtown.
The department said an “unspecified number” of people had jumped.
The fire was ongoing at 9:30 a.m. local time, the department said. There was no information on injuries.
An inflatable bag was set up on the ground on one side of the building, and a department helicopter hovered over the scene, according to the Associated Press.
Video retweeted by the LAFD appeared to show a balcony engulfed in flames and smoke as a person clung to the outside of a window, reaching for a firefighter elevated by a ladder.
The high-rise is located along Wilshire Boulevard near a string of restaurants and gyms.
A fire that erupted on the 11th floor of the same building in 2013 displaced up to 150 residents and injured two people, according to Los Angeles Times. At the time, city fire officials said the Barrington Plaza building was not equipped with a sprinkler system.
In 2014, 71 of the city’s roughly 200 residential high-rises didn’t have sprinkler systems installed, according to the Times.
The department did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the number of sprinkler systems currently installed.
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