Lemoore firemen respond quickly to burning apartment

Lemoore Volunteer Firefighter John Gibson Jr. (shown here with a thermal imaging unit checking for hot spots) and Kings County Firefighter Roy Woodcock led an upstairs apartment dweller to safety as the fire burned below his apartment.

At stake – in addition to the possible inundation of the entire complex – was the life of an apartment dweller, living directly above where the fire started, due most likely say Lemoore fire officials to an unattended stove top fire in the downstairs apartment.

Lemoore Volunteer Fire Department

The man, who remains unidentified, was preparing to exit an upstairs window with the help of the joint fire departments. Firemen were ready to bring him down, and according to Lemoore Volunteer Fireman John Gibson Jr., who was on the scene, the large man was having difficulty exiting through the window, and that’s when he and Kings County Fireman Roy Woodcock rushed into the apartment from the front door, grabbed him, and then quickly hustled him from the smoke-inundated apartment.

“When we got here, there was a guy hanging out the window,” said Gibson Jr. “It wasn’t safe to pull him out.” Quickly realizing that the man wasn’t going to make it through the window to the waiting ladder, Gibson and Woodcock acted. “We grabbed him and we ran him outside the front door.”

Lemoore firefighter Abi Shiyomura enlarges an opening to the apartment where the fire started.

The victim was rushed to the hospital where he was treated for smoke inhalation and then released. There were active smoke detectors in the complex when the firemen arrived. “We could hear them chirping,” said Gibson Jr.

According to Lemoore Volunteer Fire Chief John Gibson, both fire departments arrived quickly and managed to extinguish the fire in about 15 minutes. There was extensive damage to the downstairs apartment where the fire originated, but the remaining units were saved, despite some minor smoke damage.