HONOLULU -- When the fire alarms went off shortly after 3 AM Wednesday morning, long time resident Mal Chan thought it was just another false alarm.

"And here I thought oh, here we go again getting woken up early in the morning. Then it went on and on and on. And I thought I detected a little scent of smoke," said Chan.

The resident manager was the first to find water seeping out from under the door of apartment 601. When he opened the door to the unit, he found the bed burning and Ron Craven, 69, lifeless, slumped to one side of the bed.

Craven moved in to the Honuakaha Housing Complex on Queen Street nine months ago and lived by himself in the studio apartment on the 6th floor.

It took Honolulu firefighters only two minutes to get to the scene of the fire that broke out at 3:18 AM, because the Kakaako Fire Station is adjacent to the housing complex.

Fire investigators determined Craven had been smoking in bed. He was pronounced dead at the scene.

"The mattress caught fire. We're not sure what time in the sequence that happened, but the fire then got big enough it caused the sprinkler head to activate," said Honolulu Fire Department spokesman, Capt. Terry Seelig.

Damage to the studio unit is estimated at $5,000. Fire officials say it could have been worse without the sprinkler system.

"It kept that fire very, very small in a sense. It was confined to the mattress," said Seelig.

The seven story Honuakaha Housing Complex comprises 243 affordable-housing units, a little more than half of which are designated as rentals for senior citizens.

Chan says in her 14 years of living at the Honuakaha Housing Complex this is the first time something like this has ever happened.

"I'm totally shocked. I had no idea it was that serious," said Chan. "It's really devastating."

This is the second fatal fire on Oahu in 2010.