The pounding on the door woke David Beach about 3 a.m. Oct. 23. Someone was yelling: “Fire, fire, fire, fire fire!”
Moments later, Beach stood outside his apartment at Bardmore Terrace on Park Street in Cortland, wearing nothing but a T-shirt and shorts. He had helped his roommate, Vanessa Skordalellis, out of the third-floor apartment, but she had fallen from a ladder firefighters had set against the building.
She was being taken away in an ambulance, and he had a raging cough from the smoke inhalation that required four bottles of oxygen.
“I was taking in smoke,” Beach said. “But I saved her life. I got out of there in nothing but my shorts and a T-shirt.”
Firefighters had arrived to find Beach and his neighbors escaping the upper apartments; other apartments had already been evacuated, Fire Chief Wayne Friedman said last week. The department issued an “all hands” alert to bring in off-duty personnel, then a second alarm. In all 35 firefighters from Cortland, Cortlandville and Homer were at the scene, with firefighters from McGraw and Virgil on standby for other calls.
“Any fire in an apartment building, at that time of night, has the potential to be very catastrophic” Friedman said.
A week later, Skordalellis is still hospitalized in a Syracuse facility, Beach said, with broken vertebrae and possible shoulder injuries. “She’s still in pretty rough shape.”
He could be doing better, himself. His clothes were destroyed and he’s a big guy wearing a size 5X. The kitchen utensils, a microwave, a dinette set and coffee table – all gone.
City firefighters have placed a sign on the front door of the building saying it’s unsafe for human habitation and a week later, one can still smell the charred wood and melted vinyl outside. The structure needs to be repaired and to pass an inspection.
Beach said he believes the blaze was caused by an exothermic reaction, which he said was caused by another tenant trying to use the battery in an “E-cycle” to charge a second battery. Workers in Cortland’s City Hall said they’d heard the same story, but Cortland fire officials say the cause remains under investigation.
The other 10 to 12 people affected by the blaze have been housed in apartments, after landlord Scott Steve – Cortland’s mayor – had paid to house them for two days at a Cortland hotel.
Steve said Tuesday afternoon that he has been trying to find Beach a place to live; Beach says the attempts Steve and Steve’s wife have made fall short.
Beach, who also said that his disability makes climbing stairs difficult, is staying with his mother and stepfather in their small house outside McGraw. He said he is a Microsoft-certified technician who is well-versed with computers
Beach says he wants similar assistance to what his neighbors have been given. Other displaced residents have moved to apartments on south main Street, but Beach says he cannot climb the stairs in the building.
The American Red Cross in Cortland has cut Beach a check for $350. He estimates he had already spent two thirds of it and still needs to replace many of the items that were destroyed.
“I don’t want anything special,” Beach said, “I just want to be re-housed.”
