Copyright 2006 The Omaha World-Herald Company
By CHRIS BURBACH
Omaha World-Herald (Nebraska)
LINCOLN -- Joseph Burton was whiling away a Saturday afternoon in the way a retired guy can: sitting at the kitchen table in his underwear, sipping a beer, listening to classical music on the radio.
Then, POOF.
His apartment instantly filled with black smoke. He hurried to the kitchen window, hoping to let out enough smoke so he could find his wallet and pants and get out. But the window was too heavy. And the smoke was too heavy, too hot, too toxic.
The next thing Burton knew, he was in a hospital room, unable to speak because of a ventilator tube down his throat. Nurses, doctors and family had to fill in the blanks for him.
The “poof” Jan. 21 was the beginning of a fire that destroyed Burton’s apartment building at the College Apartments in Bellevue. It was caused, officials have said, by an overloaded extension cord two doors down from Burton’s apartment.
The 67-year-old Burton had slumped unconscious while trying to open the window. Bellevue volunteer firefighters found him wedged between the kitchen table and window, scant minutes before the blaze became so dangerous that even firefighters would be ordered from the burning building.
The firefighters tugged Burton free. They carried him down three flights of stairs. An emergency helicopter flew him, in critical condition, to the burn center of St. Elizabeth Regional Medical Center in Lincoln.
“We thought he was going to die,” said Dr. Chester Paul, comedical director of the burn center.
Burton had only superficial burns on his skin. But his lungs had been so severely damaged from prolonged inhalation of hot smoke, gases and toxins that there was only a 50-50 chance that his lungs would recover enough for him to breathe on his own.
Doctors put him on a special type of ventilator, called a VDR, that loosens secretions and dead tissue -- which can lead to deadly pneumonia -- so they can be suctioned from the lungs.
Sometime last Saturday Burton started turning a corner. Doctors weaned him off the ventilator.
“The machine got him over it, and we got him over it, long enough for his lungs to get better enough that it looks like he’s going to get well,” Paul said.
By Wednesday, Burton was well enough to talk, even joke, about his life-or-death experience. A big box of Dots candy (his preferred bedtime snack) beside his chair, he sat surrounded by family: his wife, Peggy; daughter, Susan Davis; and son, Jim Walth. He spoke in a raspy whisper and wore an oxygen tube under his nose where his mustache used to be.
The first thing he said was “thank you” to the Bellevue Volunteer Fire Department.
“I want to thank the whole crew,” Burton said. “I would especially like to thank the person that found me, and the other people that helped carry me out.”
Is it true, he asked, that the guy who found him was a new firefighter?
Anthony Wilson was indeed a new firefighter, on his first structure fire after a year with the department as a trainee, when he and Firefighter Dan Noden found Burton. District Chief Brian O’Shea helped carry Burton out. The Fire Department plans to recognize the three on Feb. 22.
Burton was the dean of College Apartments residents. He lived there 17 years, the last 14 with Peggy Burton.
Joseph Burton is retired from Majors Plastics, an Omaha manufacturer, where Peggy still works. She was at work at the time of the fire.
They loved their apartment, No. 58, despite maintenance problems. They considered it to be the nicest of the 72 units in the complex that is more than a century old.
They had made it a home, filling it with an estimated 5,000 figurines: primarily her unicorns and owls and his eagles.
There, Joseph Burton listened to classical music on KVNO-FM from the time he got up until he went to sleep.
Most of the figurines appear to have survived the fire. So did most family photos, and much of their clothing.
Their cat, Jewel, did not survive. Their electronics, including Joseph Burton’s radio, were destroyed.
“I gotta get a new radio,” Joseph Burton said.
He looked up at his wife, raised an eyebrow and drew a laugh from his family by specifying the brand. It’s the company his dad worked for.
“I want a General Electric.”