Too Close For Comfort Firefighters Rescue Teenager Trapped In Elevator Of Burning Building

Flames engulfed the warehouse around him Friday as 17-year-old Dylan Burke crouched in an elevator, his shirt over his face, straining to breathe the smoky air.

The elevator had stalled between the first and second floors. Firefighters had to find a way to drop the elevator to the first floor so that he could be rescued.

As smoke began filling the elevator and flames licked through small gaps between the doors, fire officials sounded air horns, ordering their crews out of the building.

Smoke was pouring from nearly every window of the 100-year-old building. Flames shot from the roof of the four-story brick structure and a giant column of black smoke billowed into the downtown sky. The building appeared to be in imminent danger of collapsing.

The firefighters working to rescue Burke refused to budge. They demanded, and were given, more time.

A fireman with an ax went into the basement and severed a hydraulic line for the elevator, dropping it several feet to the first floor.

The doors of the elevator were forced open and Fire Lt. Pat Farrell reached in and grabbed Burke.

“He came out of there like a cat and knocked me over,” Farrell said.

Burke had been stuck in the elevator for half an hour.

“I was yelling, ‘Get me out of here! Get me out of here!’ I thought I was going to die,” he said at the hospital where he was treated for smoke inhalation.

He was part of a crew cleaning the warehouse when a fire in a trash bin outside ignited the building.

The other two workers scrambled to safety. But Burke was stuck in the elevator with a load of scrap paper when the building’s power failed.

“I couldn’t breathe there for a while,” Burke said. “I took off my shirt and covered my mouth. I threw pieces of paper back over myself so the flames wouldn’t get them.”

James Crowe, 20, also was working in the building when he saw the trash bin on fire outside a window. He said the fire spread quickly through cleaning solvents, cardboard, paper, clothing and other merchandise stored inside the warehouse, where freightdamaged goods once were sold by a business called Bargains Galore.

“It was a matter of seconds. It was just boom, boom, boom,” Crowe said. “I had to get out. I didn’t want to burn up.”

Deputy Fire Chief Jim Klum was amazed at the rescue.

“This is the most fantastic rescue I’ve ever seen. Flames were all around that elevator,” he said.

Burke had a message for his rescuers: “I’m going to try to get the most out of my life. Thanks for giving it back to me.”

But he will be taking the stairs.

“I’m not going to go in an elevator for a long, long while.”