Man Saves Residents From Texas Apartment Fire

Paul Puranda hasn't had much time to meet his neighbors at a northeast Arlington apartment complex; he moved in only three months ago.

But when fire broke out shortly before 6 a.m. Tuesday, trapping several residents on the second floor, he didn't need a welcoming party.

"I heard somebody screaming, 'Help me! Help me!'" Puranda said Tuesday afternoon. "I ran around to the side and saw a man and his daughter standing on the ground, and it looked like the mother was still on the balcony."

Puranda encouraged the woman to jump, promising to break her fall. After that timely rescue, he heard cries from an adjacent balcony: "Save my baby! Save my baby!"

He braced himself to catch the 2-year-old boy and then helped break the mother's fall as well.

The three-alarm blaze was reported at 5:52 a.m. at The Creek of Brookhollow apartments in the 2300 block of Hollowridge Lane.

Two residents suffered smoke inhalation and another had a fractured leg after jumping to escape the flames, a fire official said.

Two people were taken to Parkland Memorial Hospital in Dallas and the third person went to Texas Health Arlington Memorial Hospital. Their conditions were unavailable. No firefighters were injured.

Firefighters rescued one woman and her three cats, fire officials said.

Conrad Case, a 15-year resident of the complex, said he awakened before the fire started and couldn't get back to sleep. He went outside on his patio, where all was quiet in the predawn darkness.

Minutes later, screams and shouts pierced the silence and Case saw flames shooting from a patio.

He watched a man throw cushions from a couch onto the ground and beg his wife to jump.

"By that time, I realized what was going on, so I woke up my wife," Case said. "We grabbed what we could and came outside to assess the situation.

"I had called 911, and they told me that units were at the scene."

The fire started in a first-floor apartment and spread throughout the complex, fire officials said. Fourteen units sustained fire and smoke damage.

The cause of the fire was under investigation, officials said.

Red Cross officials were on hand to help about 30 residents affected by the blaze, said Arlington fire Lt. Pete Arevalo.

McClatchy-Tribune News Service