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Couple tries to save pets, but husband collapses, rescued by Warren cop
By Ed Runyan
WARREN
Amy Ford emerged Wednesday afternoon from her badly burned Wick Street Southeast home knowing her husband was in the hospital, two of her cats were missing and her house of 40 years had suffered major fire damage early that morning.
With a burn on her own nose from the 3:12 a.m. blaze, she summed up her frustration: “This is stupid. I don’t know why it happened,” Ford said of the fire, which apparently began because of a faulty controller on the heating pad she was using in her second-story bedroom.
“I woke up and I had flames behind my head,” she said, explaining that the controller behind her head was on fire. She was using the pad for her back, she said.
Warren Fire Chief Ken Nussle said the Ohio State Fire Marshal’s Office, which is investigating, also believes the heating pad caused the fire. Damage to the home, which is just down the street from Warren John F. Kennedy High School, is about $40,000, Nussle said.
Ford said her husband, Cecil, was downstairs when the fire started. He and Amy both made multiple trips up and down the stairs to get water to put on the fire, but they could not put it out.
“I’m always careful,” Amy said. “I never leave the house without turning off the coffee pot or the dryer. It’s all I’ve got,” she said of her home. “My kitties and my husband – that’s it.” She said the second floor is destroyed, as are all her husband’s clothes on the first floor.
Cecil tried to rescue the dog and a dozen or so cats in the home, but eventually that was no longer possible.
Amy said she could hear her husband inside the house “calling my name. The next thing I know, this cop’s carrying him on his shoulders,” she said.
Warren police officer Joseph Wilson arrived before firefighters and “heard a male inside screaming,” his supervisor, Sgt. Dan Hudak, wrote in a Warren police report.
Wilson broke down several slats of a wood fence so he could get into the yard, then forced open a sliding patio door to get in the house.
There was “thick smoke and flames” coming from the second floor, but Wilson found Cecil Ford in the living room face down, having trouble breathing.
“Officer Wilson immediately grasped Mr. Ford and lifted him onto his back into a fireman’s carry position and removed him from the residence,” Hudak said.
Amy and Cecil Ford were taken to Trumbull Regional Medical Center for treatment. Amy was released a short time later. Cecil remained at the hospital early Wednesday afternoon, but Amy said he did not get burned, and she thinks he will be OK.
“He was laying in the hospital bed and he was making jokes,” she said.
Hudak’s report says Wilson deserves a proclamation of valor for his actions.
“If it were not for the quick and decisive action of officer Wilson and courage in the face of imminent danger, it is likely the resident would have perished,” Hudak wrote.
Amy Ford said there were no smoke detectors in her home.