Charles Payne was thinking Tuesday night about the Bond Hill mother who died with two of her children in a fire the day before, so he put a fresh battery in his smoke detector.
"His actions very likely saved his wife's life," Cincinnati District Fire Chief Mike Kroeger said.
Carole Payne, 59, woke to the alarm Wednesday afternoon and escaped along with about 150 others from a blaze that sent flames shooting from her eighth-floor window in the nine-story Park Eden apartment building on Park Avenue in Walnut Hills.
The building - home to about 177 retirees - caught fire just after noon when an extension cord lying under other items in the Paynes' apartment short-circuited, fire investigators found. The blaze did $160,000 damage.
The fire also made for dramatic rescues and the heroics of ordinary people.
About 10 percent of the apartment dwellers could not make it down the steps on their own. So maintenance workers, neighbors and visitors carried people out on chairs and gurneys.
"So many people were helping, they were getting people out any way they could," apartment manager Angela Pearl said.
Wilma Owens, who can't walk without a cane, opened her door on the eighth floor to black smoke.
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"It was coming toward me and I didn't know what to do," she said.
Neighbors helped her teeter down the steps.
"I didn't think I could make it, but I knew I had to," said Mrs. Owens, 59. "I was afraid I was going to fall. I just kept saying, "Oh, Lord, help get me down.' "
Only Mrs. Payne and her neighbor, Edith Byrd, 82, were treated for smoke inhalation. The rescue crew called for Metro buses to take the rest of the residents to a cool shelter at nearby Bush Recreation Center.
Helen Queener, 88, had to make it down just from the second floor, but that was enough. Her son, James Worthy, and another family member helped her out.
"I was praying, honey, that everybody would get out safely," she said.
While there were only minor injuries, those in the geriatrics field say the effects of going through such an ordeal can be lasting for the elderly.
"As we age, we experience more and more losses," said Elizabeth Patterson, executive director of Cincinnati Area Senior Services. "When your home is threatened . . . it's traumatic."
