ALLIANCE, Ohio — Fire officials released new helmet camera video showing the tense moments firefighters responded to a house fire in Alliance and charged inside to save a woman. Firefighters say the home did not have working fire alarms.
Fire Chief Jason Hunt said it took firefighters three minutes to roll up to the scene in Alliance after the first 1:30 a.m. call for help. But the situation early Monday morning was already desperate.
“There’s one still inside! There’s one still inside!” you can hear police and fire yell on video from the scene.
They found a woman who had escaped. She said her mom who is legally blind and later identified as Daisy Sharkey, smelled smoke and notified her of the fire. The daughter was able to escape, but she told firefighters she lost her mom in the smoke and she was still inside.
“The daughter said, ‘I made it out. My mom, I can’t find her,’” Chief Hunt said. “The condition of the smoke and fire was too great for her to go back in for her mom.”
Hunt said firefighters charged inside the home at 1:37 a.m. to find the woman's mom. Within about 30 seconds of feeling around in the heat, smoke and darkness, they found Sharkey and pulled her out.
On a helmet camera owned by one of the firefighters and shared with 3News, you can hear voices yell, “Where are they at? Where are they at?…She was last seen in the living room. They’re in through charlie! They have the victim!”
“It really is an extraordinary effort when firefighters decide to go interior in that kind of atmosphere,” Hunt said. “The Alliance Fire Department gave her the best chance that she had of a positive outcome.”
Hunt said the fire lieutenant who found her is also a paramedic. He performed CPR for around four minutes until a private ambulance arrived. Hunt said it’s typical for them to use a private ambulance when responding to fires in the small city.
“I can’t say enough about their response. It just unfortunately wasn’t the outcome that we were looking for,” Hunt said.
Despite their best efforts, Sharkey tragically didn’t survive. And investigators from the state fire marshal’s office got to work to determine what started it the fire.
“It’s a sad day for our community, certainly the family and for the fire department as well,” Hunt said.
Hunt said one of the takeaways from the fire is the importance of having working smoke alarms in your home.
“Whether it would have made a definitive difference in this case I don’t know. But it certainly didn’t help,” he said.