No chance for rescue as NY apartment fire kills four
Wes Baun grabbed his aluminum ladder and headed toward the flaming apartment complex next door on Townline Road, intent on rescuing a trapped family early Monday morning.
He had awakened a few minutes earlier to the barking of his dog, Shadow, and looked out his bedroom window to see 20-foot flames streaking into the predawn sky.
"I put on some britches and ran outside. That's when I heard someone screaming inside the apartment, and I went and got my ladder," Baun said.
But before he could climb up to the second floor of the four-unit complex, the other tenants, who had all managed to escape, stopped him, saying a rescue was too dangerous, Baun recounted.
It would take two more hours before firefighters declared the 4:30 a. m. fire under control, and several more hours would pass before the heartbreaking work of recovering bodies started.
Sifting through the collapsed gravel of the apartment occupied by Sherri Reis and her three children, firefighters removed bodies one by one and stored them in a temporary morgue behind the ruins of the four-unit apartment complex near Hessenthaler Road in this rural hamlet, according to neighbors.
"We recovered one male and three female victims," said Byron Fire Chief John Durand. Positive identifications will be made by the medical examiner, he said.
Neighbors and friends of the family believed that the victims of the fire were Sherri Reis, a factory worker; her son, Timothy, an 11th-grader at Byron-Bergen High School; and her two daughters, Emily, a student at Genesee Community College; and Virginia, a fashion design student in New York City.
The cause of the three-alarm blaze, which brought more than 10 fire companies to the scene, remained under investigation, according to Durand, who lives down the road from the complex and said he was at the scene within four minutes of receiving a 911 call.
"Within four minutes after I arrived, fire equipment started arriving, but it was impossible to launch a rescue. It was a high-intensity fire and really hot," he said. "Within 30 to 40 minutes, the roof collapsed into the attic and the second floor, then part of the second floor collapsed into the first floor."
That circumstance delayed recovery efforts, the chief said, adding that smoke alarms inside the Rieses' apartment were checked two months ago and found to be in working order, "but I didn't hear them as I stood outside when I arrived."
Though the cause of the fire is unknown, the chief explained that the blaze was able to move quickly to the three other apartments on either side of Apartment No. 2 because it was modular construction, "with no fire walls between each apartment."
"It's four lives lost. It's very tragic that people so young have lost their lives," he said.
Debbie Urban, another neighbor, said she saw tenants from the other units running to safety. "One of the couples came down the driveway, and we ran and got them blankets and clothes," Urban said. "It was heartbreaking to see. The woman was holding her cat in her arms."
The American Red Cross Genesee County Chapter is assisting three of the families that were affected by the fire by providing shelter, food and clothing. Later in the day, as school ended in the Byron-Bergen School District, classmates of Timothy Ries showed up to see what was left of the devastated apartment complex.
"Tim was our classmate. He was probably the best person you could know. He was never in a bad mood. He played hockey, baseball and had his own rock band," said Bridget Winter. "His sister Emily went to [Genesee Community College], and she was gorgeous, just so pretty and so nice. The oldest sister, Ginny, was studying fashion design."
Doug Sprague, an 11th-grader at Byron-Bergen, described the mood at school Monday as solemn. "It was quiet, really quiet," he said.
Sandy Baun, wife of Wes Baun, described Sherri Ries as a devoted single mother. She said her neighbor worked in quality inspections at a factory in the Rochester suburb of Henrietta.
"I give her credit for raising those three kids on her own," she said.
The Bauns said that the Van Slyke family owned the apartment and that they had made a number of improvements in the last year to the structure, including a new roof, plumbing and vinyl siding.
Monday afternoon, the crestfallen Wes Baun looked over at the debris-strewn front yard of the apartment complex and said, "Look, there's my ladder lying on the ground." He then shook his head, walked over to the apartments, picked up the ladder and brought it back home.
