By Ashbel S. Green
The Oregonian
Copyright 2007 The Oregonian
All Rights Reserved
 
GRESHAM, Ore. — The apartment was ablaze. Gresham firefighter Tom Rutledge faced it alone. No ladder. No hose. And there were people inside.

Rutledge had spotted smoke while he was driving to work about 6:30 a.m. Sunday. He expected to find fire crews on the scene, but when he arrived outside the building in the 800 block of North Main Street, he realized no one had called 9-1-1.

Rutledge made the call, then ran up and started banging on a door.

A woman opened it and said there were two apartments on the second floor, and three or four people lived there.

Rutledge rushed to the stairs. They were filled with smoke. He had no protective gear, no air tank. So he crawled up the stairs under the smoke. He got more than halfway, but had to turn back.

"It was too smoky," he said. "I couldn't breath."

When Rutledge had called 9-1-1, he had been put on hold because dispatchers were busy with other calls. As far as he knew, firetrucks hadn't been dispatched. That meant it was up to him to try to do something.

He ran outside and saw a man on the roof. The man said his mother and sister were inside. The man said he was going to crawl back into the burning building, but Rutledge persuaded him to jump to safety.

At this point, the first-floor tenants had escaped. Rutledge ran around back to see if he could find the two women who lived upstairs.

"I'm yelling for them, looking for a ladder," he said.

He finally got through to 9-1-1.

The women, meanwhile, dashed down the stairs to safety.

"They were coughing," he said.

But they were OK.

The fire crews arrived and put out the fire and found the body of a man who lived in the other second-floor apartment.

The Oregon state medical examiner's office did not release his name Sunday night because his next of kin had not been notified.

Investigators believe the fire probably started accidentally in the kitchen of the man who died.

Eric Lofgren, a Gresham battalion chief, estimated the fire caused about $200,000 damage to the building and contents.