Elderly Man Found Five Days after DC Blaze

A 74-year-old man was discovered alive inside his apartment five days after his senior living complex caught fire and was evacuated, although no one seemed to know that he was missing.

CNN reports that DC Mayor Muriel Bowser told reporters the man was found by structural engineers who were conducting door-to-door inspections to determine whether fire marshals could safely enter the building.

The man was taken to a hospital with non-life threatening injuries, the mayor said.

Some of the apartment doors had swelled because of the fire's heat, which prevented them from being opened, and crews had to use crowbars to pry them open.

"That's when we found this gentleman, who answered when we were making noise at his door," structural engineer Allyn Kilsheimer said. "He had a sense of humor. When I said, 'We're coming to get you,' he said, 'I'm not going any place.'"

The fire broke out at the Arthur Capper Senior Housing Center last Wednesday, and officials with DC Fire and EMS said in a news release they had rescued over 100 residents. It was believed everyone in the building had been accounted for.

"Initially, the management company confirmed that everyone on the list was accounted for," an official from the mayor's office explained. "Today, they acknowledged that they had not laid eyes on him, personally, although they had the other people who they checked off on their list."

DC Fire and EMS Chief Gregory Dean said firefighters wouldn't face disciplinary action if they missed an apartment or two during their initial search of the building. Parts of the structure began collapsing around the firefighters as they were coordinating the search and evacuating residents, he said.

"So you have people, human people, just like the rest of us, trying to accomplish a very difficult job in trying circumstances," Dean said. "So discipline is not the issue here."