Others helped from apartment blaze; residents tell of hearing smoke alarms
By Bob Purvis and Jesse Garza
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel (Wisconsin)
Copyright 2006 Journal Sentinel Inc.
Emergency medical workers restored the heartbeats of two tenants Tuesday afternoon after firefighters pulled the pair from a burning west side apartment building. Other residents were rescued as they prepared to jump from second- and third-story windows.
Joseph Ellis was holding his 2-year-old son out the window of his smoke-filled third-floor apartment in the 2300 block of W. Highland Ave. when firetrucks arrived about 3 p.m. Firefighters said Ellis was asking them to catch the baby, and he was prepared to leap from the open window, before they rescued him and his child by ladder.
“We had a whole lot of alarms going off on the first floor. I put my son’s jacket on and opened the door to the hallway, but it was too full of smoke where you couldn’t breathe or see,” Ellis said.
With smoke quickly filling the apartment, Ellis dangled his son from a window.
“I was just holding my baby out of the window so he could get some air,” Ellis said.
“I encouraged him not to jump. He was more than ready to throw his baby to me and jump himself,” Battalion Chief Randall Zingler said.
Ellis wasn’t alone. A man on the second floor on the building’s opposite side also was preparing to jump. He too was rescued, Zingler said.
While firefighters battled back the flames that whipped from inside the building, others ran inside, searching each room, Zingler said.
On the third floor, a man was found on a bed, pulseless and not breathing. A woman who had retreated into a closet to protect herself from the fire also was taken from the building showing no signs of life.
Firefighters immediately started resuscitation efforts in plain view of neighbors and parents who had come to pick up their children from the Milwaukee High School of the Arts, which sits across the street.
Medical workers were able to restart both victims’ hearts en route to the hospital, and by 4 p.m. they were breathing on their own.
Firefighters helped four more people evacuate from the first and second floors uninjured, and one more person with minor injuries.
More than 75 firefighters and medical personnel responded to the fire, which started on the first floor, Zingler said.
The cause of the blaze, which burned for 20 minutes, was not immediately known.
Residents find safety
O.B. White, 56, had just returned from a nearby store when he saw his girlfriend standing in the lot to the rear of the building and flames shooting up the side of the structure.
“I’ve been living here 10 years,” White said, staring through broken windows at the damage inside his first-floor apartment. “Everything I own is in that building.”
Willie Manns, 23, having returned home from his day job, was settling in for a nap before going to a second job later Tuesday night. As he began to doze off, he heard a fire alarm sounding.
“I’m a heavy sleeper. If I’d have fell asleep I’d be dead right now,” Manns said.
After looking into the hallway “and seeing all that smoke, I just grabbed this blanket to put over my face and ran out,” he said, a small blanket draped over his arm.
Charles Hair, who lives in the apartment above the one where the fire started, heard alarms and his screaming neighbors, woke his asthmatic wife from an afternoon nap, and helped guide her through the smoky hallway.
“I’m usually at work at this time of day, but something told me to stay home. It’s a blessing,” Hair said.
“If he wouldn’t have been there, I don’t know what I would have done. . . . The smoke was so thick in the hallway I couldn’t even see,” said his wife, Bonnie Hall.
The American Red Cross opened the Tommy G. Thompson center at State Fair Park to temporarily house most of the 45 tenants displaced by the fire.
Praising firefighters
Milwaukee Fire Chief William Wentlandt credited the heroic actions of his firefighters and their rapid response with averting a far more tragic outcome.
“We are very proud of our firefighters,” he said.
At a time of the year when the number of fires traditionally increases as temperatures dip, Wentlandt asked that people make sure they have working smoke detectors and an escape plan.
“This is again a great reminder for everyone to take their own action to be fire safe,” Wentlandt said.