Local News

Passerby aids fire evacuation

Renee Jones used to be a police officer with the National Security Agency in Fort Meade, Md., and with Braddock Borough, but she's a carpenter now, working for Lou Kabello General Contracting.

As such, Jones was returning from lunch Thursday to a remodeling job at Second Chance Strays Rescue & Lounge on the 1100 block of 13th Avenue when the sight of smoke and then flames from the second floor of a house across the avenue reactivated her police persona -- and led to a flurry of evacuations, both human and animal.

"The adrenaline hit me," Jones said Friday in a phone interview about what happened at the start of a blaze that destroyed a house and an apartment building and damaged two other structures. "To me, it was just natural instinct."

Her police officer's instinct enabled Jones not to hesitate to bang on doors -- the first being the front door of the house where she saw the smoke, a house where no one was home at the time, although it was the abode of three cats that likely died in the fire.

Jones was soon joined by Summer Socie, owner of the rescue lounge, who knew about the three cats that lived in the house.

While Jones was first on scene, she may not have been the first to notice the fire, as she heard sirens, even as she crossed the avenue -- and as Altoona police officer Christy Heck Wasser soon showed up, spurring Jones and Socie to move to the white-sided apartment house next door, to raise the alarm there.

On the first floor of that white building were a sleeping man and an older relative, whom Jones and Socie helped rouse to action, even as a neighbor from upstairs was banging on the back door, according to Socie.

"I told them to come to the cat lounge, where it was warm," Socie said.

The family had three cats, all of whom remained behind.

Socie and Jones then went to a larger, brick apartment house on the corner, where they encountered a tenant who said there were two cats in her apartment on the third floor, on the side nearest the white apartment house, from which smoke had begun to penetrate.

The pair grabbed two carriers and ran up the steps, secured those cats and came down.

Also in the brick apartment house lived a mother and son with a dog and a ferret, according to Socie.

Neither was home, but Socie knew the mother worked in a nearby nursing home, and she saw a nurse who also worked in the nursing home, so Socie asked the nurse to go back to work and fetch the woman who lived in the apartment building.

She did, and the woman came back and took her animals to safety.

A few hours later, firefighters rescued one of the three cats from the white apartment building.

The fate of the other two cats seemed uncertain, however.

Firefighters had said they saw two cats running from the white building not long after they arrived on scene, but those were probably strays, Socie said.

It turned out that the two other cats that lived in the white apartment building were found early Friday -- one by a neighbor, another by a resident.

They had remained in the building and survived, Socie said.

One was found hiding in a closet and one under a bed, as she understands it, Socie said.

"Sometimes I like animals better than people," Jones said.

Jones continues to hold out hope for the cats that lived in the house where the fire started.

"They're unaccounted for," she said.

If they're still alive, they would have had to escape between the time of the fire and the demolition of the house Thursday evening, she said.

Workers demolished the white apartment house Friday.

Mirror Staff Writer William Kibler is at 814-949-7038.