Three-year-old boy alerts family to fire inside Fresno apartment
FRESNO, Calif. (KFSN) -- Firefighters are trying to determine the cause of a devastating fire early Tuesday at a southeast Fresno apartment complex.
The fire forced more than 30 people to evacuate out of 16 units.
"I hear pounding on the door, 'Fire, get out, fire, get out,'" resident Teresa Saylor said.
Over 40 firefighters responded to an apartment fire at Winery and Kings Canyon, and firefighters say four of the 16 units displaced by the fire have heavy damage.
According to reports, firefighters say it was a three-year-old boy who lived in the unit that noticed their apartment was on fire. He woke his parents up to tell them, and they were able to get their family out safely.
"There were smoke alarms in that unit, but there were indications they were not working at the time," Hector Vasquez with the fire department said.
Neighbors surrounding that unit say their smoke detectors didn't sound off either.
"By the time I got out, I did see the other side of the building was up in flames," a neighbor said.
They say that's when they began banging on doors and helping each other get out of the building.
"If we see somebody in trouble, we jump and help," the neighbor said. "Everybody just comes together, especially in a crisis."
Fire officials say neighbors and maintenance workers also helped a man confined to a wheelchair escape from his upper unit.
"At one point, they threw a mattress down from the balcony itself thinking they were going to get trapped by fire and weren't going to have an escape route," Vasquez said.
Firefighters say only one minor injury was reported to a man who broke his window to rescue his cat. The cat was unconscious when it was brought out of the building, but firefighters were able to resuscitate it.
The Red Cross is helping those displaced by the fire.
