Apartment fire injures KU student

By By Frank Tankard (Contact)

Monday, May 1, 2006

A fire at Southpointe Apartments Friday evening sent a man, whom neighbors identified as a KU student, to the hospital with burns.

The fire started between 6 and 6:30 p.m. in a second-floor apartment at 2136 W. 26th St., just west of 26th and Iowa streets. Rich Barr, prevention division chief for Lawrence-Douglas County Fire and Medical, said the injured man was airlifted to Lawrence Memorial Hospital after a police officer had pulled him out of his burning second-floor apartment.

Barr didn’t comment on the degree of the man’s burns, but said that fire victims generally weren’t flown to the hospital unless major burns were sustained.

“Based just on that, I would say the injuries are serious,” he said.

Four fire trucks responded and firefighters contained the fire to the apartment it had started in. Barr said the fire hadn’t caused major structural damage but the contents of the apartment were destroyed. Investigators were working Friday night to determine the cause.

Tanner Willbanks, a Lawrence freshman who lives in the third-floor apartment directly above the one that burned, woke from a nap to the sound of his smoke detector. With the help of a firefighter, he made it down his smoke-filled enclosed stairway with his laptop. After the smoke cleared, he went back up with a firefighter and found his cat, Katsumi.

Lawrence resident Christine Anderson lives in the building next to the one that caught fire. As a few residents stood together in front of the building, talking in the light rain about what had happened, she stood alone with her arms crossed, looking at the balcony of the second-floor apartment as firefighters shone flashlights inside.

“Oh, God,” she said. “That’s my friend.”

— Edited by Janiece Gatson

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