When police Officer Doug Hipple burst through the front door of a group home last month, half the front porch was in flames.
Less than two minutes later, heat and smoke billowed through the open door and up the stairwell inside, trapping him on the second floor, along with the women he had rushed in to save.
All that happened before firefighters left their South Street station about a mile and a half away.
Almost three weeks later, Hipple and the three women remain hospitalized in induced comas.
Many have placed some blame on the closed Atlantic Street fire station, which firefighters said would have put them one minute closer to the blaze at 368 Bonnie Brae Ave. N.E., a group home for disabled women. In early January, the Atlantic Street and Parkman Road stations were shuttered after the city furloughed 11 firefighters.
But would that minute have made a difference?
''If you took away any one variable, it would have been a whole different fire,'' fire investigator Jeff Koehn said.
The fire
Newspaper carrier Brenda Edwards said she was driving north on Bonnie Brae Avenue N.E. on April 28 when she noticed the orange flames just after 3:20 a.m. She stopped and called 911, but didn't know the address, so she drove down the road to find a house number.
Then she saw Hipple - on his way to a call on McKinley Street - heading east on Woodland Street. She drove after him, flashing her lights and honking her horn until he stopped. They drove back to the house, and he pounded on the front door.
''It wasn't huge yet,'' said Edwards, who watched from her van. ''Probably about half the porch. But it kept getting bigger. Then I saw him go into the house. And it really upset me.''
The fire was set intentionally on the right corner of the porch and a couch there ignited, helping the flames grow larger, investigators said.
Meanwhile, night shift group home caregiver Shelly Johnson, who was doing paperwork, heard the crackling but thought it was a skateboarder. About the time she saw the flames outside the living room window, Hipple had run in the house. She told him the women who lived there were mentally handicapped and led him upstairs.
The women were Donna Cassidy, 52, Melissa Watson, 44, and Sheree Egry, 52.
Response time
According to fire investigators, it took less than two minutes for Hipple and the women to get trapped upstairs, with heat and smoke blocking their escape. According to radio logs, he lost contact about four minutes after telling dispatchers the group couldn't get out.
State Fire Marshal spokesman Shane Cartmill said fire doubles in size every 45 to 60 seconds. Based partly on that, the National Fire Protection Association recommends no more than six minutes lapse between the time a department receives a fire call to when it arrives on the scene.
''That gives crews one minute to receive the call, one minute to get on the truck and exit the station and four minutes to arrive on the scene, maximum,'' Curt Varone, NFPA director of public fire protection, said.
The timeline takes into consideration the time it takes for a small fire in a room to grow to a "flashover," or when the entire room and its contents are on fire, which then spreads to other rooms, Varone said.
''A room can be fully engulfed and reach a flashover within three minutes,'' Cartmill said. ''At this point, the likelihood of escaping is minimal. But even if you live close (to a fire station), by the time they get there, three minutes isn't a lot of time.''
Arrival
In the Bonnie Brae fire, about five minutes and 34 seconds passed between the time the station received the call and when firefighters arrived on the street at about 3:28 a.m. Koehn said if firefighters would have left from the Atlantic Street station, they would have arrived at the scene about one minute sooner. The downtown station is about a mile and a half from the fire. The Atlantic Street station is about half a mile away.
Fire Chief Ken Nussle estimated travel time at about two minutes per mile, depending on time of day and conditions.
Eleven firefighters responded that night in a ladder truck and a squad. Two firefighters got a ladder and broke through a window at the back of the house soon after their arrival, while two others worked to extinguish the fire at the front of the home. The others installed fans for ventilation and set up outside.
At least five police officers were also on the scene.
Crews reported pulling Hipple out at 3:38 a.m., about 16 minutes after he entered the home.
By about 3:44 a.m., all four victims had been pulled from the home.
According to Koehn, before layoffs, all three stations would have been open with 17 firefighters on duty. Ten would have been staffing the downtown station with three on Parkman Road and three at Atlantic Street.
"They all would have been out the door at the same time, but (the Atlantic Street crew) might have been there quicker because they'd have only one truck," Koehn said, referring to factors other than distance. The crew likely would not have gone right into the home for a search, but would have knocked the fire down at the door for the next crew to arrive, he said.
The front door
One factor that may have affected the outcome was the home's front door - which Hipple left open when he entered - partly due to the layout inside.
The home previously had been split into a duplex. Just inside the front door are enclosed stairs that lead to a landing. From there, a set of stairs heads to the second floor and another leads back down to the kitchen and the rest of the first floor in the home's rear.
Nussle said the open door created an oxygen supply and chimney effect in the stairwell for smoke and heat to rise upstairs.
"Especially the way it was set up, it went directly from the front door to the stairwell," Nussle said. "There was no chance of it spreading laterally. If the door had been closed, it's very possible it could have proven enough of a barrier at least to give the Fire Department enough time to arrive and suppress the fire."
When Johnson led Hipple upstairs, she retrieved one woman and Hipple two. About the time the smoke detector went off, they were headed back toward the landing. But Johnson lost the hand of the woman she was with and, knowing the home's floor plan, went down the stairs to the kitchen and out the back door. Officials believe Hipple, who was unfamiliar with the floor plan, became disoriented on the landing. He and the three women went back upstairs, away from the heat and smoke rising from the front door, and into a bedroom.
Meanwhile, firefighters believed the four were in the back of the house as other officers tried directing Hipple to a rear window.
''If they would have crawled back into the hallway, they would be dead,'' Koehn said. ''He was (unconscious) by the time they told him to go to the back.''
After firefighters entered a window in a rear bedroom, they began a room-by-room search. After he quit responding, officers shouted his badge number over their radios in the hope that firefighters would hear the calls through Hipple's radio and pinpoint where he was. They first found Hipple, distinguishable by his police vest, in a bedroom at the front of the home with two women. The third woman was found in another front bedroom.
Due to burns and heavy damage to their lungs from smoke inhalation, they all remain in critical condition in the Burn Center of Akron Children's Hospital.
Outcome
When it comes to how the situation could have been different, Nussle agreed with Koehn.
"We had multiple factors here," Nussle said. "A police officer unconscious, not really normal layout. Normally, firefighters can size up a house from the exterior and know what the interior will look like. This was a little bit different.''
As far as the open front door and Hipple's heroic role in the fire, Nussle said police officers generally aren't trained to enter burning buildings. But Hipple's actions were only human, he said.
''He was in rescue mode,'' Nussle said. ''That was his priority, to get the three people. It's just a natural human reaction and not really as much as being a public servant, but rather a human being. It was very commendable, but obviously we don't condone that ... because we know the effects of fire and how that will act on a body."
He said if the Atlantic Street station had been open, it could have made a difference.
"Yes, it could have," Nussle said. "Being there a minute or a little sooner ... they would have been faced with a smaller fire and the end result may have been different."
