Man jumps out window to escape an apartment building fire in Detroit

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At about 9:30 AM Saturday morning a three alarm fire broke out at the Woodland apartments a 4 story building with 26 units on Woodward and Webb in Detroit.

“One of the lady’s said your building on fire and she came around and got me, I ran back around the building so I could see the smoke, I ran up to two to grab a couple fire extinguishers to see if I could put out something but by the time I got up to the third floor the whole hallway is just completely black and smoke covered so I didn’t even enter I just left the door open,” resident Anthony Kemp said.

Resident Joyce Rich was also inside the building during the fire.  

“So we’re inside the building getting our day started as usual, my daughter was still asleep with her son, she has an 8 month old. So I had to get them up, a lot of people were still asleep,” Rich said. 

 Everyone made it out in large part thanks to the heroes who ran inside.

“We were able to go in; we made a good push on the fire. We were able to keep the fire contained to two floors; we were able to rescue several people. With the preliminary it looks like the fire started on the third floor then worked with way to the fourth floor and it burned the whole floor out so it was very dangerous conditions for the fire fighters,” Fire Battalion 8 Chief Michael Jefferson said.

 There was one individual who jumped to escape the blaze.

 “Everyone I know is conscious but I understand that there was a jumper but I do not know that persons condition,” Jefferson said.  

 However some residence claimed they could not get through to 911.

“I was trying to call 911 but it kept going to voicemail that it was busy then it kept repeating that over and over again so by the time I got somebody on the phone the fire truck pulled up,” Kept said.

The battalion chief did say he was unsure if anyone was unsure if anyone was seriously injured other than that one man who jumped, he was not clear how injured he was.