Photo Story: Two Victims Rescued from Fatal Ore. Fire

July 12, 2014
A Portland 911 dispatcher stayed on the phone with a woman who was trapped with her son in a fire early on July 11.

A Portland 911 dispatcher stayed on the phone with a woman who was trapped with her son in a fire early on July 11.

At 3:09 a.m. Portland Fire & Rescue was dispatched to an apartment fire at 2530 SE 125th Avenue.

Fire crews found heavy fire showing from the windows of a second story unit when they arrived.

One of the 911 callers reported that she could not get out of her apartment and was on the phone with emergency dispatchers when firefighters arrived and rescued her and her 4-year-old son.

While performing search and rescue operations, the crew of Truck 7 found an unconscious man inside the apartment. The crew immediately carried him outside for another fire crew to begin resuscitative efforts. Unfortunately, the 50-year-old man suffered severe burn injuries and was pronounced dead at the scene.

The fire was contained to just the one apartment in the eight unit complex. 

Because of the warm weather, two neighbors had windows open which allowed smoke to enter their apartments, activating their smoke alarms, and alerting them to the fire early. They activated a fire alarm pull station alerting the other neighbors. Despite having a working smoke alarm in the designated sleeping area in the apartment where the fire began, the man was sleeping in a living area, not required to have smoke alarms.

Portland Fire & Rescue Chief Erin Janssens commended the fire crews quick actions for containing the fire to the apartment of origin and successful rescue of the occupants in the adjoining apartments where they were threatened from hot, toxic smoke and gases and fire spread. 

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