When a small fire inside a $50 million Houston high rise apartment complex suddenly turned the 5th floor into a fiery inferno, construction worker Curtis Reissig became trapped on the unfinished balcony as he waited for fire crews to save him. The fire happened in March of 2014, completely destroying the almost complete building shell, but new footage from one of the firemen’s body cam shows an up close view of rescue.
First, here’s the video that a Karen Jones, who works in a nearby building, captured of Reisseg’s terrifying jump from the 5th floor balcony to the 4th floor balcony and his jump onto the fire truck’s ladder.
According to reports, Reisseg ran up to the roof on his lunch break to try to put out a small fire, but was soon surrounding by flames with no way to escape. As the flames took over the entire 5th floor, he thought his only way out was to jump onto the 4th floor balcony directly below and climb aboard the fire ladder from there. It’s a good thing he did that, because mere seconds after he was safely on the ladder, the 5th floor began to collapse, narrowly missing the ladder. Reisseg managed to escape with only minor burns on his hands and face and no other injuries were reported.
In newly released video that KHOU 11 was able to obtain, firefighter Dwayne Wyble caught up close footage of the rescue on his body cam. The news channel originally tried to obtain the footage right after the fire happened, but due to the ongoing investigation, the fire department was not required to release it. Investigators were never able to determine what the actual cause of the fire was, only that it started on the roof of the building. The 20mph winds that day helped the flames spread like a wildfire.
Below is KHOU11’s coverage of the body cam video:
Full story: Video shows new perspective of dramatic fire rescue | KHOU
On Tuesday morning, February 23, the Syracuse Fire Department responded to a call about a collapsed crane on a construction site near the university. Thankfully, no injuries were reported.