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GIBSON CITY, Ill. (WCIA) – Nobody was hurt in a downtown Gibson City apartment fire Thursday morning, thanks in part to two people who jumped into action when they saw the flames.
The fire broke out downtown near the corner of 9th Street and Sangamon Avenue, eventually spreading to two other buildings.
A man named Bill Kruse told WCIA he was eating breakfast when a farmer came into the restaurant saying there was a lot of smoke coming from a building just above them. Kruse called 9-1-1 around 5:35, and by 5:38, the Ford County Sheriff’s Office said crews were dispatched. Firefighters got to the scene around 5:47. By that time, a couple worried bystanders helped everybody trapped on the second floor make their escapes.
“Just pure shock. It was Kyle that jumped into motion, like: ‘I’ve got a ladder,’” Heidi Miller recalled.
In a stroke of luck amid sudden disaster, Miller and her boss “just happened to be in the right truck at the right time.” As smoke filled an apartment building early Thursday morning, the pair brought a ladder, a box truck and a helping hand to everyone trapped inside.
“Adrenaline kicked in and we just did what we had to do,” said Kyle Obert, owner of K & K Coating.
The work day was just getting started when Obert says Miller nervously described the flames she saw around the corner. Together, they rushed to the scene, and saw people inside had no way out.
“They had their heads out the windows trying to breathe so we were a little concerned for them,” Obert said.
Fire crews hadn’t gotten there yet.
“That’s when we saw a gentleman with a ladder that wasn’t long enough,” Miller said.
Somebody else told people to jump, but Obert says they could’ve fallen 20 feet.
“Kyle was like: ‘no, no, no don’t jump – I’ve got a ladder,’ and ripped it out of the back of the truck,” Miller said.
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The pair took action.
“We got two people on the north side out right away and they had a couple pets we couldn’t get out,” Obert said.
With their help, about four more people safely got out.
“Kyle was just like: ‘which window next? Which window next?’ So the guys hauled the ladder around to the other window,” Miller said.
It took roughly nine minutes for the fire department to respond – an amount of time Chief Bruce Kallal says is about average. Every person was able to escape in those critical nine minutes, but some animals were lost.
“They were really upset about that. We were trying to still figure out how to get the pets out but at that time there was too much smoke, we couldn’t go back in there,” Obert said.
Obert says they did everything they could to prevent more tragedy, and ultimately, it worked out.
“Then the fire department took over from there,” Miller said.
Kallal said it’s “amazing” what Obert and Miller were able to do, and thanked everybody who helped out Thursday. Crews were on the scene for nearly 12 hours and had to come back when the flames re-ignited around 7 p.m.
Kallal said the affected range was half a block long, adding that’s “a lot of area there to make sure is not hot anymore and not going to rekindle.” He estimates the buildings are more than 100 years old, which only heightens the fire hazard.
“From the roof you get multiple ceilings and that’s really the hardest part of these types of buildings in a downtown area is getting to the places where the fire goes and getting it all out,” Kallal said.
When the fire re-ignited, officials said flames and smoke were visible in the second building next to the apartments that originally caught fire, but it was under control in about an hour.
