Careless smoking has been blamed for an apartment fire that seriously injured a woman in Clayton Park on Thursday morning.

Halifax Fire responded to a second-floor fire at 10 Caxton Close at about 9:30 a.m.

“Once our crews arrived on scene, (they) confirmed smoke and flames visible,” Deputy Chief Roy Hollett of Halifax Fire said in an interview.

“Unfortunately, they found a female, best guess (in her) 40s or 50s, she suffered significant burns over her body. They rescued her, pulled her out, turned her over to EHS and she’s been transported to hospital in serious condition.”

The fire was out by 10:15 a.m. and fire crews searched the rest of the building but did not find anyone else.

In a tweet issued at 1:40 p.m., the fire service blamed the fire on “careless use of smoking materials.”

Building superintendent Ron Deveau said the fire was detected early on and damage was minimized as a result.

“Thank God that we caught it right away,” he said.

Deveau said the woman appeared to suffer burns to her legs, but he did not know what caused the fire.

The victim and her common-law husband lived in the building for a “couple of years,” he said.

A neighbour who lives next to the burned apartment said she had never seen the victim before the fire.

She said the woman’s skin was peeling off her legs because of the injuries, but the victim appeared calm. The neighbour did not hear anything abnormal before the fire.

She did see a man walking out behind the victim as firefighters were rescuing her.

Richard Crocker, who lives in a nearby building, said he saw firefighters used a ladder to look into some third-storey windows but did not appear to enter the building that way.