Continued: Courageous rescuers saved lives in Hastings, fire chief says

There was smoke in the hallway, and fire alarms were sounding, when police officer Amber Wiech began pounding on doors early Tuesday inside the Valley Manor apartment complex in Hastings.

After making her way to each third-floor door once, Wiech returned to where she had started, Apartment 308. There, she saw the doorknob turning, she said. But the tenant, apparently overcome by smoke, couldn't open the deadbolt lock.

Wiech asked the tenant to step back, kicked in the door and pulled the woman from the floor -- and to safety.

Authorities said the nick-of-time rescue was one of several courageous moves made by local law-enforcement personnel before firefighters could begin battling the 1:53 a.m. fire.

"I believe we would have had some fatalities up there if it had not been for the actions of the police officers and the deputies," Hastings Fire Chief Mike Schutt said.

Two police officers, two deputies and a firefighter were among 10 people -- the other five being apartment residents -- treated for minor injuries at Regina Medical Center in Hastings, Schutt said. The Twin Cities chapter of the American Red Cross said it was assisting 14 families with shelter and other emergency needs.

Late Tuesday afternoon, authorities attributed the fire's cause to food left unattended on a stove in Apartment 308. They also were investigating whether alcohol played a role in the incident.

The apartment's unnamed occupant, carried downstairs by Wiech, Hastings police officer Mark Kreun and sheriff's deputy Tim Samuelson, could be heard outside saying, "I don't know. ... I don't know what happened," neighbor Nicole Wenz said. Along with her boyfriend and 4-year-old daughter, Wenz lives in an apartment two floors directly below where the fire started.

After assisting with the Apartment 308 rescue, Kreun reentered the building to assist an elderly man yelling for help from a third-floor balcony, Police Chief Mike McMenomy said. Kreun, who along with Wiech would be treated for smoke inhalation, helped lead the man outside, the chief said.

Schutt said officers kicked in other doors, too, in an effort to alert tenants to the fire.

Indistinct 'buzz'

Inside the Valley Manor building, individual units face out to rotunda-like areas, rather than traditional hallways with apartments on two sides. The building is equipped with fire alarms, but not with sprinklers, which were not required when the apartments were built, Schutt said.

Wenz, asleep in her first-floor bedroom when the fire began, recalled being awakened by a pounding at the door and a buzzing sound that she likened to a buzzer one uses to enter a secure building, and not a fire alarm. Outside the door, she said, was an officer ordering the family to leave.

Her boyfriend, Richard Link, said that just after walking across the street in the 1000 block of Lyn Way, he saw flames shoot out "cartoon-style" -- as if from a "fire-breathing dragon" -- from Apartment 308.

Wiech, the police officer, stayed at the building until about 5:30 a.m. helping to keep people away from the fire. She then drove herself to Regina Hospital for treatment, she said, and arrived home about 8 a.m., or five hours after her shift was supposed to end. Not that she could have gotten any sleep, she said.

There was the adrenaline rush, Wiech said, and some second-guessing, too. Maybe she should have knocked louder on the door of the elderly man on the third floor, she said she thought to herself.

At the fire station, however, Schutt offered nothing but praises. The officers, he said, were "extraordinary."

Staff writer John McIntyre contributed to this report. Anthony Lonetree • 612-673-4109