By Morgan Eads and Charles Bertram
The Lexington Herald-Leader
LEXINGTON, Ky. A man was rescued by a passer-by Friday after being trapped on the second floor of his burning home on Leestown Road in Lexington.
Clarence Woodrum, 68, was in his bedroom when the fire started, and he moved to a second-floor side balcony to escape the heavy flames.
“I didn’t realize it was bad until I opened my bedroom door,” Woodrum said. “Then, good Lord, it was so bad it pushed me backward.”
Woodrum had no way of getting down to safety until William Smith Jr. arrived.
Smith, 50, of Lexington, was driving on Leestown Road to get to work in Frankfort when he saw heavy black smoke and stopped.
Fire was rolling up the back of the house when Smith arrived.
He grabbed a ladder from a side yard and took it to the side balcony to get Woodrum down.
“It wasn’t the kind of ladder you could carry someone down,” Smith said. “So we had to just guide him through every step.”
Woodrum was uninjured, but one Lexington firefighter was taken to University of Kentucky Chandler Hospital with minor injuries from a fall and from exhaustion, said Maj. Matt Galati of the Lexington Fire Department. The firefighter was put on light duty for the rest of Friday.
After getting Woodrum down, Smith and Tom Wilson tried to open the front door to get to several pets.
Smith and Wilson, who was on his way home from work at the Jim Beam distillery in Frankfort, were two of a small group that stopped to help.
Another member of the impromptu fire crew was a woman who stopped, leaving her baby in her car, to help raise the ladder to rescue Woodrum.
The front door was deadbolted, so Smith grabbed a garden hose and doused the back patio alongside another unidentified man who had stopped to help.
The urge to act quickly came naturally. Smith’s father, William Smith Sr., was a Lexington firefighter for 27 years before retiring.
“I think for me, being a firefighter’s son, being around it all my life, you realize how important time is,” Smith said. “Five minutes is a lifetime.”
Firefighters arrived a few minutes after they were called and began putting out the fire and searching for Woodrum’s seven dogs and one cat.
Smith called Woodrum’s daughter before resuming his trip to work at Frankfort Toyota.
“I wanted to make sure she knew he was OK before she saw all of that on the news,” Smith said.
A former truckdriver, Woodrum has lived in the house for 17 years, renovating it over the years. He also rescued Chihuahuas.
One by one, firefighters began pulling Chihuahuas to safety. They brought the dogs to Woodrum as they went, assuring him that they’d continue working to find the rest.
One Chihuahua, named Pippa, struggled against firefighters, nipping at their fingers. Once firefighters handed her to Woodrum, she was quiet and curled up in his lap.
“Daddy loves her and she knows it,” Woodrum said with a laugh.
Three made it out of the building safely and two were unresponsive, Galati said.
Those two were revived by firefighters who used small oxygen masks supplied to every fire truck by the Lexington Humane Society, Galati said.
One of the dogs and the cat were found dead in the burned building. Another dog was missing.
Teachers from nearby Locust Trace AgriScience Center were called to the fire to check out the dogs.
Latissa Higgins and Kathleen Magsam, who are also certified veterinary technicians, said the dogs were in good condition.
The five dogs that were rescued are doing well and are in the care of Animal Care and Control until Woodrum has a place to stay and can pick them up, animal control officer Timothy Brown said.
“It’s very rewarding any time we can make a difference,” Galati said. “Every day, we see bad stuff, ... so any time there’s a happy ending, it’s a morale booster.”
The cause of the fire remains unknown, but Woodrum told investigators that just before the fire, he’d heard his live-in housekeeper arguing with her boyfriend.
Woodrum said he heard the man threaten to burn the house down.
“Then, sure enough, the house was on fire,” Woodrum said.
Fire investigators are asking anyone who saw the fire or has any information to call (859) 231-5672, Galati said.
When Smith arrived to work in Frankfort, he was still shaken by the experience, he said.
“My dad never mentioned what he did as a firefighter,” Smith said. “I can understand that now.”
Smith hasn’t had a chance to tell his father about what he did yet, because the elder Smith is working at the Keeneland September Yearling Sale. “Hopefully he’ll be proud of me,” Smith said.
“Now I’m just waiting to go home and hug my wife and kids,” Smith said. “It was a good day.”
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