Quick-acting employee saves Brooklyn Park tenants from gas fire

Jasmin Korman was driving home to Blaine on Thursday evening when he got a frantic call. A young woman said she smelled stove gas in the Brooklyn Park apartment building where he worked.

"I said, I'll be right there," Korman, 21, said Friday. He made a U-turn and drove seven minutes back to Kensington Place Apartments, calling his supervisor en route. With the supervisor's advice, Korman got two young women out of their second-floor unit and opened their windows. He escaped the apartment as it burst into flames and ran to turn off the basement gas line. Then Korman, his supervisor and the complex owner alerted other residents.

The three-floor building could have exploded and killed people, City Fire Chief Ken Prillaman said Friday, and Korman's efforts were "instrumental in preventing this from becoming a lot worse than it was." The three men risked their lives to warn the 62 tenants, all of whom escaped unharmed, Prillaman said.

When Korman entered the women's apartment, he remembers hearing gas spurting from a cracked copper pipe by the stove. "It was blowing so hard I thought it was a water faucet," he said. He opened the patio sliding door and dashed back toward the kitchen to get out.

"A big wave of fire came running at me," he said. He closed his eyes. "For a second I thought I was dead. It didn't stop. I ran out of there to shut the boiler room [gas] line off."

Then he met his supervisor, Zeljko Veric, who had turned off the outside gas main. The apartment complex owner, John Roder, arrived shortly after. The three headed back into the burning building, near Zane and 83rd avenues, to alert tenants.

"We were screaming, 'Fire! Move out! Leave everything!'" recounted Veric, 49.

The smoke was so thick on the second floor that Korman couldn't see Veric. "I was trying to feel the doors. We were yelling, trying to find each other as we ran and knocked," Korman said.

Korman, who started working at the apartment complex six months ago, had keys but found it was faster to kick open some doors as they went up and down hallways.

"They all got out. We were happy and surprised because nobody was hurt," Veric said.

The three men suffered smoke inhalation. Korman's eyebrows, head and arm hair were singed and he had a burn mark on one arm, he said.

"I feel really awful for all the people that lost their homes," he said.

Utility companies routinely warn residents to evacuate a building immediately if they smell gas.

Prillaman said the woman who smelled gas had moved her stove to clean it and knocked open the gas line, which ignited from the pilot light or another source. He said it took his firefighters, assisted by seven other departments, about 2 1/2 hours to ensure the fire was under control. He estimated the loss at more than $400,000.

The American Red Cross was helping the 17 displaced families find housing.

Veric said both he and Korman's family are from Bosnia, and that he hired Korman after a friend said Korman was looking for work. "I am very proud of Jasmin," Veric said.

"He is never late. He follows the rules and tries to learn every day," Veric said. "I am very proud because I am teaching him. My role is to make somebody better than me."

Veric said he was also proud to work for Roder, who didn't just give orders but went into the burning building with them to warn residents.

Korman said his parents and two sisters were scared when he told them what happened, but thanked God he was safe.

Jim Adams • 612-673-7658