MIDS DISTRICT — A fire in Residential Block 22-C on Tier 3 killed seven residents and injured thirty-one early Saturday morning. The fire originated in a ground-floor commercial unit occupied by an unlicensed electronics repair shop and spread vertically through the building's ventilation system, which lacked the fire suppression baffles required by the Municipal Safety Code.

The building's automated fire suppression system failed to activate. Preliminary investigation by the Meridian Fire Authority suggests the system was manually disabled at some point in the past — the control panel showed evidence of tampering, with the activation circuit physically bypassed with a copper jumper wire. Building management company Apex Property Solutions has denied knowledge of the modification and has retained legal counsel.

Seven victims were recovered from floors four through six. Three were children under the age of twelve. The youngest was four years old. Emergency response time was eighteen minutes — within the municipal standard for Tier 3, but eight minutes longer than the Tier 5 standard that applies to the Crown District four kilometers above.

The surviving residents have been temporarily housed in a Meridian Municipal Authority emergency facility. Their personal belongings, identification documents, UBC records, and in several cases their only set of clothing were destroyed in the fire. The process of restoring their administrative existence — proving to various systems that they are who they say they are — is expected to take weeks. One survivor, when asked how she was coping, said: 'The fire took twenty minutes. The paperwork will take months. I'm not sure which one is worse.'