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Rooftop rescue from Ogden fire / Apartment resident tells of discovering early-morning blaze, waking neighbors
By SAM COOPEROGDEN -- Scott Chadwick awoke to the smell of smoke in his apartment at about 2:30 a.m. Monday. After throwing on clothes, he checked the hallway to see what was happening and immediately realized the 13 residents of the five-unit apartment building at 685 27th St. were in trouble.
"It was filled with midnight-black smoke," he said. "You couldn't see nothing."
The hallway in the back of the building was choked in smoke, blocking the stairway and cutting off escape for those above, he said.
Chadwick looked for another way out, jumping a few feet from his kitchen window to the ground below. Thinking of his neighbors still inside, Chadwick ran to the apartment at the back of the building, which was closest to the flames.
"I kicked in the door, but they have a really aggressive dog and it came after me," Chadwick said. "So I pulled the door shut and it hit the door."
Desperate, Chadwick said he threw a white plastic crate at an upstairs window with a loud bang, trying to wake up his neighbors.
"It was the first thing I could grab," he said. "I winged it up there."
The residents, a man and his two young sons, then crawled out a window onto the roof about 20 feet above the ground.
Smoke and fire continued to spread through the building as other residents of the upper floor scrambled to escape. Two adults and a dog managed to climb out onto the roof above the front porch, and another adult escaped the flames by climbing out onto the roof on the west side of the building.
The father of the two boys wanted to drop them down to Chadwick, but he asked to wait a few moments longer to see if firefighters arrived.
"I said, 'If I miss them, they're going to hit that sidewalk there, and we can't have that.' "
Meanwhile, emergency workers were rushing to the scene.
"Firefighters received the call at 2:35 a.m.," said Ogden Deputy Fire Chief Chad Tucker. "We had reports that people were out on the roof."
Upon arrival, firefighters immediately propped up ground ladders and plucked the residents and the dog safely off the burning structure.
Tucker said crews then battled the blaze for about 45 minutes before it was extinguished. They were able to contain most of the fire damage to the main floor.
One person from an upstairs apartment was transported to the hospital, treated for smoke inhalation and then released, Tucker said. Two cats died in the blaze, he said.
Fire investigators are still working to determine the cause of the fire, which residents of the building believe started in the back hallway. Thirteen people were living in the building Monday, Tucker said.
Chadwick said the landlord recently installed a new electric heating system in the building, one of the city's older homes that had been converted to apartments. Because the landlord isn't a licensed electrician, Chadwick said, he was upset and had called the landlord on Sunday to complain.
"I had an argument with him installing this stuff," he said. "Because I had hard words with him, they (fire investigators) made me come down and take a lie detector test."
Tucker said investigators had spoken with several residents of the building and the landlord as part of their investigation, but have not yet been able to identify the cause of the fire.
Chadwick said he passed the lie detector test. He said investigators told him they believe the fire was started with some sort of accelerant.
"They asked me if I saw any cans, gas cans, in the hallway," Chadwick said. "They said they found a can or something."
Fire officials declined to comment on his claim, citing the ongoing investigation.
The building isn't properly prepared for a fire, and residents have complained to the landlord in the past, Chadwick said.
Chadwick said his apartment doesn't have a smoke detector, and smoke detectors installed in the hallways don't have batteries. Tucker said they had heard from residents of the building that not all the apartments were equipped with working smoke detectors.
"The difficulty is, landlords will put those (smoke detectors) in for inspection, then a tenant will burn something and take them out," Tucker said. The building does not have a fire escape from the second floor, but that might not have been legally required at the time it was converted to apartments, he said.
Tucker estimated the blaze caused about $30,000 damage. Occupants of the building who were not able to return to their apartments were being assisted by the Red Cross, family or friends, Tucker said.
Chadwick shrugged at the suggestion he acted heroically to alert his upstairs neighbors.
"I done what I could do. There was no way to get up there."
Add Your Comment
Any dog will be aggressive to some degree if they feel that their territory is being intruded upon.
The dog is not aggressive I have petted it before him before and he was fine with it.
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