By Bianca Prieto
Rocky Mountain News (Denver, CO)
Copyright 2006 Denver Publishing Company
An eight-year veteran of the Denver Fire Department was hospitalized after collapsing at a house fire Sunday evening.
The firefighter, whom department officials did not name, had difficulty breathing and was being escorted out of the ranch-style brick home in the 2300 block of Poplar Street when he collapsed and lost consciousness just after 8 p.m.
Moments before, the firefighter had told his crew he was having difficulty breathing as they battled flames in the home’s basement.
Denver Fire Chief Larry Trujillo did not release the man’s name because some family members had not been notified late Sunday, but he said the man was in top physical condition.
The injured firefighter regained consciousness before he was taken by ambulance to Denver Health Medical Center where doctors sedated him and planned to keep him overnight for observation, Trujillo said.
“He was talking, awake and alert when they brought him in,” said Heather Green, spokeswoman for the department. “They are concerned about damage to his airways.”
The firefighter was in serious, but stable condition late Sunday, she said.
A second firefighter, whose name also was not released, suffered a sprained ankle during the blaze.
Four residents were displaced by the fire that ripped through their home.
Garry Green said he was in the basement and had just finished getting his hair braided when his child’s mother noticed something in the nearby laundry room.
When he looked, the room was full of flames. “It looked like Backdraft,” he said, referring to the popular film. “It was so fast and so big.”
Green yelled upstairs to family members to get out of the house because the basement was on fire. The smoke filled the house in a matter of minutes, he said.
“There was a whole family of generations born and raised in there,” he said, while standing in front a neighbor’s house.
Green hugged his brother, Douglas Green, 17, who also escaped the fire, and the two encouraged each other about starting over.
No one in the home was injured, but much of its contents were lost.
The collapse of their fellow firefighter took an emotional toll on the crews who still had to battle the flames, Trujillo said.
“It’s just like your own brother, sister, mother or father being injured,” Trujillo said. “It’s really hard to still have to put the fire out when you know someone is down.”