By TEREASA NIMS
Sunday Times Newspapers
ALLEN PARK – Residents of the city-owned Leo Paluch senior apartment complex began moving back home Friday after the building was closed following a pre-dawn fire Monday that claimed one life and hospitalized 11.
The cause of the blaze at the complex, 17000 Champaign, still was under investigation as of Friday.
Christine Bentley, 63, died in the blaze. The fire reportedly started in her second floor apartment, and she went door to door alerting others to the fire. One couple told Andy Hill, Leo Paluch executive director, that Bentley’s knock saved their lives.
Bentley reportedly was found outside her apartment and taken to Oakwood Hospital-Dearborn but was pronounced dead on arrival.
Several other residents were taken to Oakwood facilities in Wyandotte and Dearborn for conditions ranging from smoke inhalation to a fractured ankle. Two remained hospitalized as of Friday.
Hill said he received a call at 5:10 a.m. Monday from a resident saying the building was on fire. A few minutes later he was walking residents out of the building and directing them to the nearby Allen Park Library as part of the city’s senior housing emergency plan.
“I don’t know who called me,” said Hill, who arrived at the fire in such a hurry that he wasn’t wearing socks.
Hill said the residents followed the evacuation plan, which he said is read — along with the tornado plan — to tenants when they move to the complex.
Within seven minutes 63 of the building’s 64 residents were accounted for, including two off premises. The only person unaccounted for was Bentley.
“Everything worked,” Hill said of the evacuation and fire suppression. “Residents were rescued from their windows. People did what they were supposed to do.”
While most of the residents made it out without injury, the center is going to re-evaluate the evacuation plan.
“Everybody wants what is faster, quicker, better, louder,” Hill said. “We’re going to review the evacuation plan, going forward. We are going to see if we can do things even better.
“We are assembling what happened.”
Hill said he morns Bentley, but said the blaze could have been much worse.
Fire departments from Allen Park, Dearborn, Dearborn Heights, Lincoln Park, Southgate, Taylor and Wyandotte responded to the fire.
As of Friday, 47 of the 64 units re-opened. Another seven units will reopen this week and the remaining 10 units will reopen within the next six months.
Hill said he is grateful to the fire department and neighbors of the building.
“They brought blankets off their own beds,” he said.
(Tereasa Nims can be reached at [email protected].)