WHITEHALL TOWNSHIP, Pa. — A man helped save a woman from a Lehigh County apartment fire Saturday night.
He shared his firsthand account with 69 News.
“So, I was shoveling next to the greenhouse which is about 20 feet away from her apartment and I heard the alarm going off,” said Avery Csezmadia.
He said he then immediately began knocking on an apartment door on 4th Street in Whitehall Township.
“I didn’t get a response. I noticed the neighbor’s door was kind of cracked open so I started knocking, so I started knocking pretty hard,” said Csezmadia.
He said the woman who lives at the apartment that was on fire came out of her neighbor’s place and went inside the burning building.
“She grabbed her phone off a shelf or something, goes right past the door and then I pretty much had to drag her out. She was like I got this, I got that in there and I didn’t want her breathing all that smoke in,” said Csezmadia.
Csezmadia said he and others began looking for a fire extinguisher and found one in an office.
He said once he had one he crawled back in because of the smoke and began fighting the flames.
“Then I fought the fire for maybe 20 seconds and that was about it. I got most of it out, but as soon as the fire extinguisher quit on me, it came right back up,” said Csezmadia.
“When police arrived, they found heavy fire in the front room of the apartment. The door was left open and police ended up closing the door and that stopped the spread of the fire,” said Whitehall Township Fire Chief Mark Bilder.
Chief Bilder said firefighters put out the fire in ten minutes when they arrived.
He said the apartment has total damage and no other apartments were impacted.
“I really hate fires since I lost my garage. So, I’m really glad I was able to help someone else out in that situation, but I mean it could’ve been a lot worse if no one had heard that. So, I’m definitely glad I was here when that happened,” said Czesmadia.
The Fire Chief said the cause of the fire remains under investigation and that nobody was injured.
