Passers-By Help Save 3 From Fire Couple, Baby Rescued From Roof; Firefighter Also Saved From Blaze

There was nowhere else to go.

Thick, oily smoke was pouring in both doors to Allen Miller’s second-story Spokane apartment on Thursday, cutting off escape.

So Miller dragged his girlfriend and her 1-year-old son out a window and onto a narrow roof that shelters the porch below the apartment.

Seconds later, neighbors and firefighters helped the trio to safety as flames consumed the second floor of the fourplex at 1407 W. Boone.

“It all happened so fast,” said Miller, 26, who was home when the fire broke because he called in sick to his job at Westinghouse Security.

“It was a good thing you did, huh, baby?” said his 23-year-old girlfriend, Angee Harrington.

Miller, Harrington and her son, Terry, all escaped unharmed.

A firefighter who also became trapped by the flames was plucked from a second-story window by his colleagues.

Lt. Greg Borg leaned out the window yelling “mayday, mayday, mayday” as the blaze rushed toward him in a room on the east side of the building.

Firefighters ran to Borg’s aid, raising a ladder to the window as flames and smoke shot out over his head. He scrambled down unhurt and continued battling the blaze.

“The fire just flashed over toward his side of the room,” said Richard Kness of the Spokane Fire Department. “He was cut off.”

The blaze broke out at 1 p.m.

Miller said he and Harrington were making lunch when he saw smoke seeping in the front door.

“I opened the front door, and it was all black,” Miller said from the porch of a neighbor’s house. “I tried the back way, and it was all smoke there, too. I decided we’d have to go out the window.”

So he broke out the glass and led Harrington and the baby outside.

That’s where Pete Holman spotted them.

Holman was driving past the tan and brown building with his wife and daughter when he saw smoke, then spied the couple and child on the roof.

The out-of-work Spokane printer stopped his car and ran to help.

“I didn’t want the baby in all that smoke,” he said later, as he watched flames roared out of a hole firefighters cut in the roof of the building. “Me and another guy helped get the baby down.”

They also helped Miller off the roof and were attempting to assist Harrington when firefighters arrived and took over.

Miller and Harrington, who had lived in the apartment for about a month, said they were grateful that Holman and the others stopped.

“The neighbors all got over here really fast,” said Harrington, still shaking and teary-eyed an hour after her rescue. “Neighbors from all over. Neighbors I haven’t even met yet.”

Holman was self-effacing.

“When you’re dealing with a child, you can’t consider yourself a hero,” he said. “A child is a gift of life. You’ve got to do what you can to help them.”

Firefighters weren’t sure what started the blaze, which caused extensive damage to the second floor. Investigators were on the scene late Thursday.

Miller suspects it began in a neighbor’s apartment and spread to the hallway. No one else was believed to be in the building when the fire started.

He and Harrington plan to stay with friends for a few days before searching for a new home. Miller said they didn’t have any immediate prospects, but he didn’t care.

“Anywhere’s better than being dead, or in the hospital,” he said.

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