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Two adults seriously injured after fire in Southwest apartment building, officials say Firefighters help seniors evacuate from major fire in Southwest apartment building
(about 5 hours later)
Two adults were seriously injured in a fire in an apartment building in Southwest D.C. Saturday morning, officials said. Smoke in the first-floor apartment was so thick that firefighter Ralph Thompson could not see the faces of the man and woman inside, inches from his own.
The fire department received a call at 9:56 a.m., said Vito Maggiolo, a spokesman for the D.C. Fire and Emergency Medical Services Department. Firefighters found “heavy fire conditions” that began in a first floor apartment, he said. Many of the residents in the apartment building are seniors with mobility issues, so 80 firefighters were sent to help, he said. But he said he could tell what they were feeling when the man reached out and grabbed his hand, holding it so tight that Thompson said he could “tell that his desperation and panic had set in.”
The apartment building is in the 1200 block of Delaware Avenue. Outside the apartment in Southwest D.C., firefighters used a saw to cut through the metal bars that prevented the occupants from escaping through the window. Inside, they worked to extinguish the blaze, which began Saturday morning in Greenleaf Senior Center, an eight-story brick building a few blocks from Nationals Park.
Maggiolo said the two adults who were injured were sent to a nearby trauma center. The fire has been extinguished, and investigators were on the scene Saturday morning trying to determine its cause, Maggiolo said. As Thompson held the man’s hand, he recalled, he tried to offer reassurance, saying that help was coming soon. He said the woman collapsed on the floor.
Soon after — Thompson said it’s difficult to say exactly how long — firefighters sawed through the window bars and Thompson and his colleagues hoisted the man and woman to safety.
Both were transported to a local trauma center with serious injuries, said Vito Maggiolo, a spokesman for the D.C. Fire and Emergency Medical Services Department. He said the two were among seven residents taken to area hospitals.
Maggiolo said investigators were working to determine the cause of the blaze. The D.C. Housing Authority, which manages the building, and the Red Cross are working to find housing for residents in five units that were so severely damaged that they are unlivable, Maggiolo said.
Greenleaf Senior is a 170-unit building constructed in 1959, according to the D.C. Housing Authority’s website. Nearly 50 percent of residents in the public housing building have disabilities, and 47 percent are seniors.
An employee who answered the main number for the D.C. Housing Authority on Saturday said that a spokesperson for the agency could not be reached on the weekend.
Maggiolo said that when the fire department received the call at 9:56 a.m., 80 firefighters were dispatched to help evacuate the seniors and other residents with disabilities who might have trouble walking on their own.
After being evacuated from the building on Delaware Avenue, many seniors sat outside, waiting in wheelchairs or on scooters for instructions about what to do next. Firetrucks and police cars filled the street in front of the building.
Evelyn Abiodun, 66, said she panicked when she heard the fire alarm and started to smell the smoke in her third-floor apartment. A broken wheelchair had left her bedridden for weeks. She said she worried that her daughter, who recently got out of the hospital after having surgery, wouldn’t be able to help her get out.
But then, she said, police officers arrived, picked up her broken wheelchair and carried her out of the building.
“It was a lot of steps coming down, and I’m a heavy sister,” she said, sitting in the parking lot outside the building Saturday afternoon.
Sitting across the lot was Veronica Sims. She usually uses a walker or a scooter, and she wished police had offered to carry her, she said. Instead, she fell trying to get down the stairs from her second-floor apartment.
“It’s killing me,” she said, pointing to her swollen ankle wrapped in white gauze. “I think I need to go to the hospital again.”
Dolores Arrendell, 66, was able to get down the stairs from her third-floor apartment on her own. But Arrendell, who has asthma and heart trouble, said she had difficulty breathing and felt her heart beating faster when she smelled the smoke. She said a police officer had to come help evacuate her husband, who has cancer.
And Arrendell said the fire made her question whether she feels safe in the building where she has lived since 2006.
“If this happens again, who knows if we’re going to get out? Our health is on the line,” she said.
One cautious step at a time, an injured firefighter leaves hospitalOne cautious step at a time, an injured firefighter leaves hospital
Rookie D.C. firefighter critically injured responding to blazeRookie D.C. firefighter critically injured responding to blaze
Fire at senior housing complex in D.C. prompts rescuesFire at senior housing complex in D.C. prompts rescues
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