Fire destroys historic TD apartment house

Minutes later, Justin Gaige pulled up, quickly conferred with Alan Eagy, who lives across the street, and grabbed a heavy 20-foot ladder from Eagy’s property and the two men propped it against a low roof to enable the escape of residents trapped in the upstairs apartment.

A third man, who the Chronicle was unable to identify, climbed up the ladder and ripped out an air conditioning unit from a window so a woman and man could escape the upstairs apartment.

That woman sustained a deep gash to her arm from broken glass, and Gaige said she climbed down the ladder with a blanket or towel wrapped around her arm.

Scarborough said the woman, who declined to talk to the Chronicle, later had surgery on her arm at the hospital.

Scarborough said there were three apartments in the historic home, and all five occupants escaped. There were no pets in the apartments, which included two on the main floor and one upstairs. A basement had washers and dryers.

The fire cause is still under investigation, according to a report from Mid-Columbia Fire & Rescue.

After she escaped, Scarborough was standing in the street in just her sweatpants and a t-shirt, what she’d worn to bed. Eagy was running toward her and asking if she was okay. She asked to borrow his phone to call her mom. Eagy could not be reached for comment.

“I never did hear a smoke alarm,” she said. “It never woke me up.”

“After the flames were coming at me I just rolled out of bed and ran out the front door and the whole porch to my right was just engulfed in flames already,” she said.

Scarborough, 28, a 2006 graduate of The Dalles Wahtonka High School and a certified nurse’s aide at the Oregon Veterans’ Home, had just moved in a week earlier, and had gotten the place decorated the way she liked it.

She didn’t have renter’s insurance and wanted to encourage people to get it. “It’s like less than $100 a year, it’s so cheap.”

But she and other renters met with Red Cross and were given pre-paid VISA cards. She’s already been to Portland to shop for essentials and was back to work Monday. She’s moved back in with her parents in Dallesport.

Read the full story online at www.thedalleschronicle.com.