Stephanie Osburn was heading home on West Third Street just after 1 p.m. Thursday when her husband noticed the flames and yelled to her, “I looked up and the house had fire coming out of the top corner window on the East side. I was getting ready to call 911 and the neighbor across the street was running, already on the phone to 911.”
Osburn continued home but walked the block and a half back.
“I walked down here to see if anybody needed help, if they needed somewhere to go to get out of the cold,” Osburn told the Democrat at the scene Thursday afternoon. “There was a lady outside with a little brown and white Chihuahua. She's like ‘Can you hold him? Can you hold him?’ so I just held her dog and walked around with it. She said ‘there's a lady in there.’ These two kids came out and I guess they lived there too, and they were concerned because their pets are trapped inside.”
At 1:23 p.m., the Sedalia Fire Department was dispatched to 901 W. Third St. for the structure fire.
“We got a call for a structure fire; we were told that it was an apartment complex on fire. A police officer on scene said he had heavy fire showing out the front window,” SFD Battalion Chief Barry White said. “We were notified there could be a woman possibly trapped in the front apartment.”
According to SFD, the structure was divided into three apartments, making the entry more difficult.
“It's a very large two-story structure,” said White. “tTe house was all chopped-up into different apartments that made it hard to get into. The freezing weather made it more difficult on the firefighters, 32 degrees is not too bad but when it gets down to zero everybody's gear is freezing up, their gloves are freezing solid, it's hard to hold to their tools.”
White praised his firefighters for their heroic efforts.
“The guys that went in there and knocked it down made a great effort,” he said. “They had to make it through a wall of fire, dive into the apartment and were able to locate another unburned room that just had a lot of smoke damage.”
Firefighters reportedly had to drag an elderly female resident back through the blazing front room. One firefighter was injured in the rescue and taken to Bothwell Regional Health Center in unknown condition.
One cat reportedly died in the blaze, but the firefighters did rescue a dog.
The woman was transported to a Kansas City hospital burn unit.
“She's just an elderly lady so they put her in an ambulance, and I didn't know she was dead or alive,” said Osburn, “but somebody said that she was still breathing. It was awful.”
The Sedalia Fire Department has turned the investigation over to the Missouri State Fire Marshal’s Office.
