By Archie Ingersoll
The Journal Gazette
FORT WAYNE, Ind. — Firefighters rescued six people — one critically injured — from a smoky blaze Sunday morning at the Eden Green apartment complex, the Fort Wayne Fire Department said.
Emergency crews were sent to 1314 Greene Street, a two-story building in southeast Fort Wayne, about 7:30 a.m. Some residents escaped to second-floor balconies, and firefighters used ladders to help them to the ground.
Adam Lambert, who lives in a house across the street from the 16- unit building, was watching the news in his living room when he heard a commotion outside. He stepped onto his front porch and, in the low light of the morning, saw what appeared to be a man, woman and child on one of the balconies.
They were yelling, “Help us!” as pitch-black smoke poured from the apartment on a back corner of the building, Lambert said.
“There was a massive amount of smoke coming out,” he said. “It was all coming out of the one apartment, out the door, out the window.”
When Lambert, 46, first came onto his porch, an ambulance had already arrived and a fire truck was pulling up to the building.
“When the firemen got here, they had tossed a ladder over the fence and another one up the building and another one up the rail and brought the people down off the balcony that way,” he said.
The fire department reported rescuing five people from balconies on the front and back of the building. Those people, believed to be in good condition, were hospitalized for observation.
In the second-floor apartment where the fire started, firefighters saved a person, who was transported to a hospital in critical condition.
A seventh person went to a hospital to be treated for smoke inhalation but was not taken there by paramedics, said Stacey Fleming, a fire department spokeswoman.
The fire was brought under control in about 15 minutes. Investigators determined that food accidentally left on a stove ignited the blaze, which caused moderate damage to the apartment.
The tenant had taken down the unit’s smoke detector several weeks ago, so at the time of the fire, there was not a working detector in the home, the fire department said.
The American Red Cross offered help to the building’s residents, who were all displaced from their apartments Sunday night.
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