Some residents still not able to go back home after an apartment fire, others feel lucky to be alive

DETROIT, Mich. (WXYZ) - Some of the residents living at a senior apartment building in a Detroit high rise are still not able to go home because of damage from a fire. Others feel lucky just to be alive after firefighters helped rescue them.

“Right now I’m just out here in limo,” said Bill Timmermon.  He stood outside where he lives at Griswold Apartments and carried around a bag of toiletries from the Red Cross anxious to see where he will sleep tonight.

 “So right now I’m out here in just limbo,” said Timmermon.

Management at apartments put him and handful of others up at the Hilton Hotel after a fire on the sixth floor of their building last night.

 “We can’t go in unless it’s with a staff member for safety,” said Timmermon.

Timmermon lived below the fire, but people who lived above it on the eight floor like 23-year-old Avery Chambers who has cerebral palsy and is wheelchair bound had to be carried out.

“I’m his arms and legs so he depends on me,” said his father Cleotis Chambers.  When he got too tired to carry him anymore, residents and a Detroit firefighter came to their rescue.

“I couldn’t step down all the way, so they continued to take him down,” said Chambers.

People were also trapped on the seventh floor, including a man on dialysis who was too sick to move on his own. “The firefighters, there was about eight of them. They strapped him to a gurney and they held it and carried him down and they said don’t worry, we have you,” said Debra Miller.  She said firefighters gave her and the man oxygen so they wouldn’t suffer harm from the smoke.

Firefighters had the fire under control quickly and managed to contain it to the one apartment. The cause of the fire is still now known and may not be for a couple of days.

At least one man is still in the hospital from his injuries.