A mother and her infant were trapped on the balcony of their second-story apartment in the Walden Pond Apartments complex in High Ridge late Monday afternoon (Sept. 24) after a fire in a breezeway filled their apartment with smoke. The fire was not a threat to the woman and her 6-week-old child, but they had to wait on the balcony, along with the family dog, for about 20 minutes while firefighters put out the fire and cleared smoke from their apartment, said Engineer John Barton of the High Ridge Fire Protection District.
“They couldn’t get out because the smoke was a danger for them,” he said. “We put out the fire and ventilated the apartment.”
After that, the mother and baby were able to come in from the balcony and leave the apartment, and the two were checked out by North Jefferson County Ambulance District personnel. They were OK and did not have to be taken to the hospital, Barton said.
The fire district was dispatched to the apartment complex in the 4300 block of Thoreau Trail at 4:39 p.m. and arrived on the scene at 4:43 p.m. When the first unit arrived, firefighters saw smoke coming from the breezeway and found a box full of materials on fire outside the apartment building, and the fire had spread to the side of the building and damaged the siding, Barton said.
He said apartment maintenance workers used a fire extinguisher on the blaze and already had it under control when crews arrived.
“We had a little fire and some smoldering debris,” Barton said.
Firefighters finished extinguishing the fire while other members of the crew went from apartment to apartment, checking on residents. There were eight apartments in the building and four or five of them had smoke in them. All the other residents who had smoke in their apartments were able to get out of their apartments before firefighters arrived or shortly after firefighters came to check on them, Barton said.
However, an elderly couple could not get out on their own, although they had no smoke in their apartment. They, too, were checked out at the scene and were OK, Barton said.
He said the fire is considered suspicious and the cause is undetermined. The High Ridge Fire Marshal and the state Fire Marshal’s Office are investigating it.