Firefighters rescue woman, son
Published: November 15, 2005
AVONDALE – Firefighters rescued a 78-year-old woman and her son from a smoky two-alarm fire in their second-floor apartment on East Martin Luther King Drive early this morning.
“I wouldn’t have gotten off that roof,’’ Mary E. Lawrence said of the firefighters’ rescue efforts.
“All I could see was the black smoke,” Lawrence recalled before she was able to crawl outside onto the roof of a first-floor beauty shop. “I remembered what the firefighters say – get on the floor (and crawl to an exit).”
Firefighters responded to a report of a fire at 435 E. Martin Luther King Drive with people trapped at 6:50 a.m., District Fire Chief Steve Kluesener said this morning. A large column of smoke was visible from Downtown, he said.
Due to report of people trapped and the heavy volume of fire, he called a second alarm for additional manpower before he arrived on the scene, Kluesener said.
When firefighters arrived, they rescued Lawrence from the roof and went inside the burning apartment and rescued her son, 62-year-old Robert Lawrence Jr.
The son was taken to University Hospital, Kluesener said. He was being treated in the emergency room this morning, and his condition is listed as stable.
Mary Lawrence was treated at the scene for smoke inhalation.
The injuries could have been much worse if firefighters hadn’t arrived when they did, Kluesener said.
The fire caused an estimated $75,000 damage. The cause has not yet been determined, the district chief said.
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