A townhome building fire in Evergreen early Tuesday morning killed one person, according to an Evergreen Fire Rescue tweet.

Evergreen Fire Rescue responded to a structure fire in the 4000 block of Silver Spruce Lane just before 4:30 a.m. Tuesday. One person died in the fire, but there were no other injuries, according to Evergreen Fire Rescue spokesperson Stacee Martin.

Officials evacuated the multi-level townhome due to the smoke conditions and sent in fire investigators. The fire only affected one unit, which Martin said is uninhabitable, but not a total loss.

Many of the residents of the surrounding units have been able to return to their homes, Martin said.

At 6 a.m., Evergreen Fire Rescue said in a tweet that Little Cub Creek Road near Highway 73 and Silver Spruce Lane was down to one lane. Officials asked drivers to drive slowly and carefully through the area.

The cause of the fire is still under investigation, Martin said, and could have been much worse if the smoke detectors in the unit didn’t work.

“Make sure your smoke detectors work,” Martin said. “What really helped in this situation was that there were smoke detectors in the neighboring units that were going off and alerted people. People heeded the warning and called 911.”

Martin said there is some misinformation going around about sprinkler systems in buildings to deal with fires. Had the unit had a sprinkler system, there may have been much less damage, according to Martin.

“Unfortunately there were no sprinkler systems in this case,” Martin said. “If there had been, we probably wouldn’t be having this conversation.”