5 treated for inhalation after apartment fire

One tenant caught a
3-month-old dropped from
a second-floor balcony.

By TIM YOVICH

VINDICATOR TRUMBULL STAFF

WARREN — Delshawn Dansler says he’s just glad a cigarette didn’t cost someone their life.

The 23-year-old unemployed Dansler was in No. 206 of the Avon Oaks apartments on the west side early Tuesday when one of three friends staying with him smelled smoke.

Dansler said he rushed out, onto his second-story balcony, and could see the flames shooting from a first-floor apartment.

Making sure that his three friends got out safely, Dansler went outside. He looked up and saw a woman on her third-floor balcony with a baby.

“She had the baby and didn’t want to take it through the smoke,” Dansler said. “I told her to drop the baby and I’d catch it. ... She dropped the baby and I caught her.”

He noted that firefighters were able to get the mother off the balcony with a ladder.

A number of tenants at the apartment complex on Southern Boulevard were rescued during the blaze, which fire Chief Kenneth Nussle said could have been deadly.

“It could have been catastrophic, to say the least,” Nussle said.

Five tenants were taken to St. Joseph Health Center and one to Forum Health Trumbull Memorial Hospital for treatment of smoke inhalation.

The Trumbull County Chapter of the American Red Cross said the five were released later in the morning.

Cathy Balko, Red Cross emergency service specialist, said the agency may end up providing assistance to two families.

There is no estimate of damage by the fire department as a result of the blaze that broke out about 5:15 a.m.

Flames were ignited on the first floor of the 12-unit complex, rented by a woman who fell asleep on her couch while smoking a cigarette, the chief said.

Dansler said a woman in her 50s who smokes lives in No. 108, where the fire broke out.

“It feels good helping someone else. I would hate for someone to lose their life because of a cigarette,” Dansler said. He will be staying with relatives until he can get back into his apartment.

Flames were confined to No. 108 but smoke spread throughout the complex, the chief explained.

Nussle said that tenant Thaddeus Walker, who lives across the hall from where the fire started, heard the smoke alarms sounding and went inside the woman’s apartment. She was still sleeping when her neighbor carried her to safety, the chief said.

Walker then called the fire department. Nussle credited him with averting multiple fire fatalities.

Jack Jackson and his girlfriend awoke in her first-floor apartment early Tuesday and were forced to flee out of a window.

“There was smoke coming through the cracks around the door,” Jackson recalled.

When he opened the apartment door, he couldn’t see anything because of the billowing smoke.

It was then that Jackson and his girlfriend, whom he wouldn’t identify, fled No. 105 through the first-floor window.

Jackson said his girlfriend will continue to occupy her apartment because it has only minor smoke damage.

Nussle said assistant Fire Chief Steve Williams ordered his firefighters to search the interior while they fought the flames.

Besides the mother and child from the second-floor front balcony, two adults were rescued from the second-floor back balcony.

The complex is owned by New Phase Development LLC of Euclid.

Company owner Ramesh Vaid said Tuesday that he doesn’t know where all the tenants went.

He too had no estimate of damage, but said the property is insured and he plans to have the damage repaired and the apartments reopened.

yovich@vindy.com