Falling Ceiling Hits Firefighter Despite Injury, She Wanted Back Into The Fire

Kelly Tellez had never seen a fire of such great magnitude.

Early Friday morning, she and other Spokane firefighters suddenly found themselves on the roof of the burning Fairmont Apartments.

Below them, flames were bursting out of windows.

Tellez and her colleagues made their way down to the floor below, the sixth, where they began pulling down the ceiling. Fire was raging in the rafters over their heads.

“It was totally smoke. You couldn’t see anything,” Tellez recalled Saturday.

Tellez worked with a team of five firefighters armed with pike poles and hoses.

As the 37-year-old paramedic ripped damp sheetrock from above, two pieces hit her on the head. Despite her helmet, the force of the blow caused her to stumble and fall.

Then her air tank alarm, signaling she was almost out of oxygen, began to sound. She felt dizzy.

Fellow firefighters helped her back to the roof where she got into a bucket that lowered her to the streets below.

Moments later, she said she was ready to go back in.

But co-workers, noticing her dazed expression, asked if she could remember what day it was.

“I couldn’t,” Tellez said.

The only firefighter injured during Spokane’s biggest downtown fire in nearly a decade, she was taken to Deaconess Medical Center, where doctors X-rayed her neck and checked for signs of concussion. Released a few hours later, she is spending the weekend recuperating at home.

Tellez, whose father also works for the Fire Department, has been fighting fires for four years. She works out of Station 15 near Hillyard.

When there’s a huge blaze like Friday’s there is no fear, she said. Only respect.

“You really kick into a respect mode. It’s a lot of respect for the damage this fire possesses.”