MOULTRIE, Ga. — A Sunday morning fire sparked by an unattended stove damaged two apartment units and caused smoke damage to several other Moultrie residents’ apartments.

Moultrie Fire Department personnel were dispatched at 9:54 a.m. to the Centertown apartment complex, where the residence of Lorenzo Thornton was on fire.

The flames from Thornton’s apartment spread to a neighboring apartment at the 404 Seventh Ave. S.W. complex, said Assistant Fire Chief Lamar Plymel.

“It started in an apartment downstairs and radiated out and caught the wooden balcony on fire on the second floor and went into that apartment,” he said.

Thornton told firefighters that he had turned on his stove before going outside to light his grill. When he prepared to head back inside “all he could see was flames,” fire reports said.

A neighbor, who heard Thornton screaming upon noticing the fire, tried to use a hose to contain the flames. However, when the neighbor sprayed the water on the closed sliding glass door it shattered due to the sharp difference in temperature between the liquid and the hot glass.

At that point they called for assistance.

Thornton’s apartment had heavy fire damage in the kitchen and smoke damage throughout. The residence of the upstairs neighbor, who was not at home at the time of the blaze, also suffered fire and smoke damage, according to fire reports.

There was heavy smoke damage in three other nearby apartments and light smoke damage in another three of the units.