OROVILLE – The Oroville Police Department are looking into the cause of a fire that has left the tenants of a fourplex homeless while the landlord makes repairs.

The fire, which occurred at the corner of Main and Golden Street, was called in to the Oroville Fire Department shortly after midnight, Friday, Dec. 15, according to Fire Chief Rod Noel.

“The fire started in a little storage shed outside one of the resident’s windows. After everyone got out, the tenants tried to put the fire out using one of the fire extinguishers from inside the apartment complex but that didn’t work,” said Noel.

The tenants called the fire in to county dispatch and Oroville Police Officer Chris Patterson responded to the scene.

“When the Police Department got to the apartment there was no fire inside. We knocked it down on the outside, but fire got in through a window air conditioning unit and started burning the magazines on an end table inside one of the apartments. That spread to the couch and was the cause of the smoke damage in all four units,” Noel said. “We were there until about 2 a.m. The original cause of the fire looked suspicious, but that’s up to the police to investigate.”

Oroville Police Chief Todd Hill confirmed his officers were investigating the fire as suspicious.

“Going by what one of the tenants told us about a person who did not live there we feel there is enough reason to look into the fire,” said Chief Hill.