A pot of grease on the stove appears to be the culprit in a fire that destroyed one apartment, damaged two others and left at least one family without a home on Thursday afternoon.

Flames billowed from the front windows of a one-story apartment at Newport Commons Apartment complex, off Simpson Road, in Anderson around 12:40 p.m., leaving Ann Juan, her mother, Diann Schultz, and her 8-year-old daughter, Heaven, without a home.

“I didn’t mean to turn the burner on,” Juan said.

She said she pulled frozen fries out and poured oil in the pan to fry them. But she didn’t know she’d turned on the burner. In the meantime, she went to another apartment to talk to someone when a neighbor alerted her that the apartment was on fire.

The same thing happened to her two years ago at the same apartment complex. She went to cook fries, put the grease in the pan and then accidentally left the burner on, she said.

“My mother had just replaced the furniture. Now we’ve lost everything again,” Juan said.

Broadway Fire Station Assistant Chief Kim Strickland said no one was injured in the fire.

Flames destroyed the ground-level apartment where Juan, her mother and her daughter lived. Heat and smoke damaged the apartment above it and one of the neighboring apartments, Strickland said.