St. Paul apartment fire witness recalls escape

I want to take us back over to St. Paul where we're still following the apartment fire there. The chopper did just clear. I don't have any new information at this time yet, but it does look like they are maybe getting this a little bit more under control just based on what I've been watching over the last couple of minutes. They are just absolutely dousing this building with water, Rob. The front door to the complex is open, and I could see water just cascading down. Yeah, well, you see that. I mean, the way that they're dumping it in, and they will for quite a while from the top, and then it just makes its way down. So then the question is, as they said, they're going to assess it for structural integrity. If the roof is collapsed and you have that much water damage, it's an older building. How it's constructed, if it can withstand that water damage and be rehabilitated or not. I'm not. But again, we don't know how many of the 20 units in that were occupied. You would think that in this market, they probably all were. But we don't know that. So you've got a lot of people there now facing a displacement and loss of property. Yeah, sorry, Rob. I'm just trying to see if I can dig up any more info online. But I'm pretty sure I saw somewhere on one of those... Like a scanner type. Yeah, I think I saw that. Yeah, that it did seem like there were a number of units involved in this. So and if you're looking at the building there, you can see the windows blown out on the upper floor. I mean, it's gonna be pretty extensive damage once they're able to get in there safely, but important to note, again, no injuries that we've heard of so far. Yeah, none reported, so that's the plus side. But again, between the smoke. damage, the fire damage and the smoke damage and the water damage. You've got a lot of people who got out with whatever they could carry or were wearing. Right, right. Yeah. And roof has fully collapsed. Neighboring buildings were also evacuated. Red Cross already on the scene, which is pretty standard in scenarios like this, even ones not quite this large. But, you know, helping give those people a little bit of help. And luckily, Rob, it's not like Bad weather, these situations are always a little bit hairy when it's raining. Oh, I wonder if this is a... It looks like we're about to get an interview. I think, is this a, not sure, can we hear this? Hold on, let's, yeah, let's listen in. She wakes up at 8 and says, hey, it smells like a fire. It smells like something's on fire. So I go and I pace around the apartment building, and I can see in the car windows there's, like, smoke, but I can't see where the smoke's coming from. And then I notice that it's from our building. So I go back inside, and this girl that lives in apartment 304, she said, I think it's my apartment. And so I follow her up to her apartment. She lets me in, and then she takes me to her closet. And then in our closet, we have these little lights. And all around the light, it was black, but there's no smoke or anything in the apartment. And then right after she shows me that, I'm coming down the stairs to get my wife and our daughter. And the fire alarms start going off. By then, fire department starts showing up and the only thing I grabbed, I went back inside and I didn't grab anything important, didn't grab the wedding rings, didn't grab anything, grabbed a coffee instead. But we got the baby out and from what I've heard, there's no, nobody hurt, nothing like that. So that's really the most important thing. Tell me about in that moment. Hearing the alarm, knowing there's a fire, what was going through your head and your heart? I mean, the smoke was white, so I thought it was just like, I thought it would be one of those situations where ten firefighters go up and one guy blows the fire extinguisher and then they go, all clear. But then, I don't know, as I saw him pull up, I kept hearing guys say nine alarm, which didn't make sense because I thought they only went up to five. But I was just worried about my baby, worried about my wife. But they were already outside. They instantly came outside. My wife didn't even grab her coat. So yeah, it was this was at eight on the dot pretty much like eight on the dot. I go look for the fire by 8:10. The fire alarms are going off. And yeah. Oh, that was me. So we're right above the laundry room. there's this big maroon box in the basement that's like i guess the master electrical system or something and it was it had this really weird beep it didn't sound like a fire alarm it's just like this constant beeping and i went down to look at it at like one in the morning and it said electrical and sewage So I thought, oh, there's an electric problem with the sewage system, not really a big deal. And then last night, I was actually cooking, and my broiler turned off when I was trying to toast a sandwich, and I used the little AI, and I was like, oh, that could be an electric issue, and then the lights all night were dimming, like every light. At first, I thought it was my apartment, I go outside, and it was... the what do you the alley light or whatever and even the hallway lights they were just dimming and then coming back dimming and coming back so questions are going through your head right i mean i'm just glad i'm just glad everybody's safe um i mean it does suck though i mean there's our whole lives were in that apartment i mean we've been here since we moved in right at the start of the pandemic back in 2020 and I'm a knickknacker, so we just had, I mean, I collected all these little castles that grandmas would buy their kids back in the 80s, these Danbury castles, and those are all gone, and I mean, but people, I mean, the main thing is people are safe, so that's, that's really my main concern, but, you know, when everyone's safe, then you start worrying about the stupid stuff, but, I mean, some of the stuff, though, like the memory box of just, like, You know, we went to Mackinac Island and just, like, the tickets for the ferry or some of her baby clothes. Like, I really hope we can get that type of stuff more than, like, I mean, I guess that's material. But, you know, like her cow pajamas. Like, she first started to say moo when we put the cow pajamas on. Or she has this little fox and hound after we watched the movie. And she's only 15 months, and she'd carry them around. Yeah, it was just, so that type of stuff. I hope some of that can be gotten. But I hope nobody else lost. I don't know, their Krugerrand collection or some crazy thing like that. Like, their box of grandma's jewels. So, I don't know. Well, we're so glad. Yeah. But we all so ache with you. We're planning, this is going to be the first real Christmas where the baby, like, was aware of everything. We're really looking forward to that. And I always bring her up. Is it all decorated yet? It wasn't all decorated yet. We're not. You can't decorate before Thanksgiving, you've got to wait until Black Friday to decorate. Was it a pool? Yeah, I think every unit was occupied. And a free pool? Yeah, 20 units in total. And did any experience anything? I mean, nothing like this. I mean, needed a new door lock, you know, just stupid things like that. We're also really glad because our neighbors next to us, I think they're babies. 12 months, 13 months, and luckily they were out of the, they were completely out of the apartment. So that was kind of, that was concern number two after, before I grabbed the coffee, but. And then you're on the first floor. Yep. When things kind of first started, you went up to the third floor. Yeah, I went up to the third floor where the girl, like, she let me into her apartment to show me where she thought the smoke was coming from, and it just, it didn't look that bad. I mean, it looked like... It literally looked like something they were going to put out with a fire extinguisher and then beat. So the smoke and flame or... You could just smell the smoke when you're on the third floor. There's no actual smoke coming into the third floor at all. All right, Dan Chula, one of the residents who ran off into a 20-unit apartment complex that is now under defensive attack by several fires. So you mentioned here, Amber, that he went up to the apartment on the third floor. Oh, I'm completely written off. The resident there said that there was some white smoke, and it was kind of coming out by, I think he said, a light fixture. White smoke would suggest... Electrical, suggest, we don't know, but I mean that would be, and that's what he mentioned too is that, was it overnight or the last evening or that lights were dimming and coming back up inside and outside. I thought he said the alley lights as well, so that also suggests some electrical issues here. But a white smoke out of an electrical area, typically that's involving overheating. Yeah, of something. So yeah, and that can happen when it's, you know, like old wiring. These buildings look to be on the older side, right? And as a owner of an old home, I know what that can do when there's old wiring trying to carry enough power through it to run modern devices. Yeah, and if the power was going up and down, that would seem to be some sort of surge issue or just current issue. But we'll see. We haven't heard any updated information from St. Paul Fire except that, again, no injuries, everybody evacuated, 20 units. And as you heard him talking about, they got out, but what they're worried about is the stuff that may not have monetary value but has sentimental and personal value. To them, you know, things that you've collected and they don't know what is going to be salvageable from that, so yeah