Woman carried 10 floors to safety in fire earns local police award

The fire happened in May at the Park Layne Apartments near the Dayton Art Institute.

FIRST REPORT  May 26, 2018

A blaze in an 11-story Dayton high-rise building injured at least five firefighters and two others and forced the evacuation of dozens Saturday at Park Layne Apartments near the Dayton Art Institute.

At least 60 firefighters dispatched on four aerial ladder trucks and eight fire truck pumpers and an array of support vehicles arrived to battle the blaze and evacuate residents as smoke billowed out of an eighth-floor window, scorching the side of the building just before noon Saturday.

Police officers and firefighters helped dozens of residents — many elderly or disabled — out of the high-rise complex in the 500 block of Belmonte Park North.

The Red Cross set up a temporary shelter across the street at the Annunciation Greek Orthodox Church, said Bryan J. Adams, a Dayton Fire Department firefighter and public information officer. Dispatchers sent firefighters to the scene about 11:47 a.m.

RELATED: Five firefighters, two residents hurt in high-rise apartment fire

Fire investigators initial findings determined an accidental cooking fire started in the kitchen of an eighth-floor apartment, he said.

A damage estimate wasn’t immediately available, but smoke damage to the upper floors was expected to be “fairly extensive,” Adams said. Residents remained outside the building for hours Saturday waiting to return to their apartments. Authorities did not have an exact number of how many people the blaze forced out.

Park Layne resident Lucas Bechtel, 28, heard the fire alarm go off sometime after 11:30 a.m.

“It’s always one of those, ‘Is this the real one?’” he said. “We had one earlier this year that was just like a small cooking fire, no big deal.”

This time, he and his roommates learned it was serious.

“We get everything together, we came downstairs, we look up and we saw smoke billowing out of the eighth-floor apartment there,” he said. “It’s like, yeah, it’s a good thing we got going there because it was definitely pretty serious.”

Fellow roommate Laura Davidson, 25, quickly left her ninth-floor apartment.

“Basically, I heard the alarms go off and the first thing I did was grabbed my pet rabbit and stuffed him into his carrier and grabbed my purse and got ready to head downstairs,” she said, standing on a sidewalk as a parade of fire trucks formed a blockade and fire hoses snaked through the neighborhood. “I’m really happy that all of us are out. That’s all that really matters.”

One firefighter suffered smoke inhalation, another an arm injury and three more had heat exhaustion, Adams said. Three firefighters were transported to Miami Valley Hospital.

The extent of residents’ injuries were not immediately known, but none were apparently life threatening, officials said. One elderly woman wearing an oxygen mask was put on a stretcher and transported by ambulance for medical treatment.

PHOTOS: Black smoke rises from Dayton apartment

One man who identified himself as a son of a resident said he was told his mother had been cooking when apparently a grease fire started in her apartment. She evacuated safely, he said.

Dayton Police Sgt. Creigee S. Coleman said authorities went door-to-door to get residents out. When he arrived, he said he carried a woman who uses a walker down five flights of stairs.

“I wanted to make sure I could get to as many people as possible to make sure I could evacuate as many people as possible, and again, when that lady could not walk it was good I was there because we do not know what would have happened,” he said.

So many firefighters were at the scene off-duty Fire Department personnel were called in on standby at some city fire stations, Adams said.

A message was left Saturday with F&W Properties, which manages the high-rise building.

Staff writer Richard Wilson and Cox Media Group Ohio videographer DeAngelo Byrd contributed to this story.