Midvale • After a fire drove hundreds of tenants from their homes at a Midvale apartment complex last week, many took to an online forum to swap stories.

Faulty elevators. Dead outlets that were left unfixed. A burning smell weeks before the blaze.

Jennifer Corcoran, who called the North Union Apartments home for more than a year, created the group, which has swelled to about 150 people. Corcoran and other residents accuse the management company, Keller Management, of letting building maintenance fall by the wayside, misleading them about liability coverage the company offered and communicating poorly in the fire’s aftermath.

Most of the residents “essentially lost everything,” Corcoran said. “It is a total loss for so many of us. And the management, quite frankly, is just coming off very apathetic, like they don’t care at all.”

Repeated attempts by The Salt Lake Tribune to reach a Keller Management representative for comment — by email, by phone and in person — were unsuccessful.

While Keller Management ran the now-charred building at 942 E. North Union Ave., the firm’s related investment arm, Keller Investment Properties, owns it through a Delaware holding company. The founder and CEO of both companies is big-time Republican and Utah Valley University donor Scott Keller.

The destructive fire started due to a mechanical issue in the building’s attic, the Unified Fire Authority said, prompting the evacuation of all 223 occupied units. A more detailed report on its cause is not yet finished, authority spokesperson Nate Cochran said. The flames raged for 27 hours.

Real estate brokerage Northmarq’s website had listed the complex as under contract for a sale, but as of Thursday afternoon it was no longer featured. It had been on the market since February. The brokerage did not respond to a request for comment on the deal.

Residents’ concerns

While the residents are not pointing to the electrical issues they noted as the cause of the blaze, they wanted to document that problems had been known before the fire forced them to flee.

Roommates Salina Ochoa and Rachel Young said the breaker in their fourth-floor apartment had tripped at least twice since they started living there in May. Tripped breakers possibly indicate irregularities — like short-circuiting or ground faults — in the electrical wiring, according to experts, and can happen due to running too many high-wattage appliances at once.

Ochoa and Young were able to get a maintenance worker to take a look at the problem. The first time, the worker reset the breaker. The second time, they were told to unplug their minifridge.

Corcoran said the cleaning of common areas had lagged in the six months before the fire as well. She described, for example, seeing “bunches of bugs” sitting on hallway windowsills.

Residents also have criticized Keller’s communication since the blaze, especially over the weekend and early this week. Young described it as “sparse.”

“A lot of people are really just looking for answers,” Ochoa said on Monday. “But I think just having a little more communication overall would be nice.”

Multiple tenants said that they had been receiving more information from firefighters on the scene and Midvale officials than the management company. Even when the company organized a Zoom call to share information with residents, the poor audio, residents said, made it hard to glean anything from it.

Late Tuesday afternoon, residents were told in writing that their leases would be canceled with no penalty, bringing a small relief.

Getting deposits back and salvaging items from their ruined apartments has proved to be less straightforward, with first- through third-floor residents being confined to two-hour blocks scheduled for Thursday, Friday and Saturday. Additional pickup times may be available later. Some residents had been able to get into the building earlier this week as well.

“I just can’t wrap my head around trying to organize a move out on such short notice,” Corcoran wrote in an email, “and how I will be able to sort through, pack, and move what’s salvageable within two hours.”

After initially telling tenants they would need to sign a legal agreement to get back their deposits, the coalition shared, the management company changed course Thursday afternoon and did away with the paperwork.

‘Dream apartment’ gone

Sarah Losee and Paige Jolley loved their new place on the building’s second floor.

“We were actually so happy there,” Losee said. “Honestly, and this is the saddest part, this was our dream apartment.”

While Losee was already awake, Jolley was jolted from her sleep by the fire alarm. At that point, their hallway was filled with smoke. Jolley believes the alarm should have blared sooner.

They gathered their cats, Jack and Max, and pulled their cars out of the garage before it was blocked by a fire truck. Jolley said she didn’t even put on shoes and left behind important medications.

Before they moved in, Jolley and Losee said the company led them to believe that a liability waiver it offered would also cover the loss of their belongings in the case of a disaster. They weren’t the only ones, according to residents’ letters.

“We had the insurance that the building offered,” Jolley said. “And, in going over the lease document with management, she explained that renters insurance was included, that there were options for more coverage, but this was all we needed.”

Despite those assurances given to the pair and others, the policy simply cleared tenants of financial responsibility of any accidental damage up to $100,000 that they caused to the property. Corcoran signed up for the $15 monthly charge, too.

“It was a liability waiver payment we made to Keller, collected by Keller, sold to us by Keller, that Keller used to insure itself and only itself,” residents wrote in their Thursday letter. “This information was buried in a 62-page lease. Shame on us, we suppose, for not understanding the legal nuance of this boilerplate behemoth of a contract.”