Dramatic Rescue

“The apartment was filled with smoke and pitch-black”

Two fire departments were on the scene.(Bild: FOTOKERSCHI / MARKUS HAUSER)

That was a close call! After a neighbor detected the smell of smoke in an apartment building on Thursday, she alerted the fire department. Since the tenant didn’t respond to knocking, the firefighters broke down the door. Not a second too soon, as it turned out.

Around 8:30 a.m., a neighbor raised the alarm after smelling smoke coming from the ground-floor apartment. Firefighters from Pasching and Leonding rushed to the scene. “The windows and shutters in the apartment in question were closed. The door was already very hot. We used the air compressor and rang the doorbell, but the tenant didn’t respond,” said incident commander Dominik Wögerbauer, describing the dramatic minutes.

Tenant Carried Outside
The firefighters broke down the door, where flames were already engulfing them in the entryway. “The breathing apparatus team fired a stream of water and then advanced into the apartment. We found the tenant lying in the living room. He was still conscious and was carried outside, but he lost consciousness during the rescue,” said Wögerbauer.

Heavy smoke
The apartment was already heavily filled with smoke: “It was hot and pitch-black. We were just glad to have him out,” said the volunteer. The 60-year-old was handed over to emergency responders and taken to the hospital with severe smoke inhalation. Although the fire was quickly extinguished, the apartment is currently uninhabitable.

Investigation Underway
The cause of the fire in the closet area is the subject of a police investigation. Wögerbauer on the operation: “With that much smoke, just a few puffs and you’re gone. That was a last-minute rescue.”