Saturday, January 16, 1999

Firemen survive fatal blaze

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2 trapped after recovering body

BY TANYA BRICKING
The Cincinnati Enquirer

A fire on Brotherton Road in Oakley killed one resident and nearly claimed two firefighters. (Glenn Hartong photo) | ZOOM |

        Cincinnati Fire Lt. David Johnson thought he was going to die Friday morning inside the burning Oakley apartment building.

        The five-alarm fire already had claimed one life — 56-year-old Kathleen Kelly — and a second woman was reported to be trapped inside.

        So, after handing Ms. Kelly's limp body out to other firefighters, Lt. Johnson and Firefighter Gerald Belle went back in, intent on making a rescue.

        Lt. Johnson had already used up about half an hour's worth of oxygen. The bell on his face mask sounded, signaling he had just five minutes left.

        Those minutes passed quickly as he shouted for anyone else who might be inside. He and Mr. Belle kept searching as their oxygen tanks ran low. They pressed the buttons on their chest equipment alerting colleagues that they were running out of time.

        They couldn't find any more victims, and they couldn't find a way out of the second floor of the maze-like building. The stairs they had come up had caught fire. They couldn't see through the smoke.

        Mr. Belle still had some oxygen left in his tank, but Lt. Johnson's last seconds ticked by. He felt his mask stick to his face. He had taken his last breath.

        In desperation, he reached out.

        “I put my hand out, almost in disgust, thinking, "I'm going to die in this building,' and I felt the edge of a window pane.”

        He knocked out the glass, and he and Mr. Belle made it out.

        “It was a scary situation,” said Lt. Johnson, 27, an eight-year veteran. “There was nobody there, and there was no air left. I think the Lord put a window there.”

        Their efforts were bittersweet. Ms. Kelly, a tiny woman with a quick smile for all her neighbors, was dead of smoke inhalation. Everyone else in the building got out safely.

        A third firefighter, Fernando Armstrong, 29, escaped injury after walking in the front door and falling to the basement as the floor collapsed. Another, Lt. Guy Frazier, 39, suffered a cut to his hand.

        The blaze started in the basement of 3240 Brotherton Road, waking tenants on the first floor about 3:30 a.m.

        A barefoot woman carrying a baby ran across the street, screaming for someone to call 911.

        Brenda Ferguson, 38, made the call and gave her freezing neighbor a coat and shoes. She knew nearly everyone in the building and remembered Ms. Kelly as the shy, sweet woman who lived alone in the rear left of the second floor.

        Neighbor Joyce Good stared out across the street at the burned-out, eight-unit apartment building. Water from the fire hoses hung in the trees like exaggerated icicles, their sparkle contrasting with the blackness of the charred building.

        “I really, really feel like crying,” said Mrs. Good, 57. “I saw when they brought her down, and I saw the ambulance not move. It's not my house or any of my belongings, but you feel really bad.”

        Neighbors remember Ms. Kelly as the woman who walked quickly with her head down and would look up with a wide grin when people said hello.

        She was a regular coffee drinker at Hardee's around the corner on Madison Road and always got her grayish-white hair trimmed in a short clipper-cut style at Hairtricity down the street.

        She shared the building with the couple with the baby downstairs, father-and-son roommates, and a man on her floor who filled his balcony with dozens of plants and flowers.

        Tenants Richard Schulte, 50, and Donna Loeber, 53, were in good condition Friday evening at University Hospital. Aimy Debord, 20, and her daughter, who will be 2 next month, were treated for minor injuries and released. The American Red Cross provided shelter for the tenants of the gutted building, an estimated $250,000 loss.

        Natural gas in the gas-heated building fed the fire, but investigators are still trying to determine the cause, Fire Capt. Dan Rottmueller said.

        Lt. Johnson went back into work Friday afternoon, ready to make the next run.

        “It's just part of the job,” he said. “You just shake it off and go on. The ... sad thing about the day is the lady didn't survive. I just think things happen for a reason. It wasn't our day to go.”

       

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