April 16, 1982

Resident climbs three stories to safety

       Frances Lynn Lauth usually works a day shift at an Indianapolis Hospital, but this week she agreed to work an extra week of nights.  So she was sleeping Thursday when fire broke out in the Kings Mill Apartment building where she lives.  Something awakened her.  She thinks she might have heard the smoke alarms but isn’t sure that’s the reason she woke up because she said she is a sound sleeper.  Groping through the smoke filled bedroom and living room, she reached the door, only to discover the doorknob was hot.  She said she had remembered the warning about that being a sign there was probably a fire in the next room, so she went to the balcony of her third floor apartment.  Three men on the ground below coaxed her to safety from there.  She says they had to “talk her down.”  As she slid over her balcony railing to the balcony below, they caught her and repeated the rescue technique as she lowered herself from the second floor to the ground.  She said she never had a chance to find out their names.  Ms. Lauth, 25, a licensed practical nurse at Riley Hospital for Children, sat huddled on a curb across from the blazing building after she was rescued.  She was pale and shaking, looking bewildered as the fire spread from apartment to apartment.  She shook her head and wiped tears from her eyes.  She was barefoot and wrapped in a large towel.  She had escaped wearing only green surgical scrubs, her pajamas and her wide rimmed eyeglasses.  Her contact lenses, which she had taken out before going to bed, were lost in the fire.  “She’s wiped out,” her father, Frank, told a reporter.  “There’s no way the insurance can cover everything.  It even cracked the glass on her car.  Her father comforted her as they watched the firemen work to douse the flames.  He said his daughter called him after she escaped from the apartment.  He looked outside the Penney’s store, at Greenwood Park Mall, where he works.  “I could see it from there.  I knew it was bad,” he said.  For a while Ms. Lauth sat alone on the curb among hundreds of spectators who came to watch the wind whipped blaze.  Later, an unidentified female spectator sat next to her and offered comfort.  The woman said when she saw Ms. Lauth, obviously distraught and sitting on the curb, she thought she could be of consolation.  Ms. Lauth said ordinarily she would have been working days this week.  However, when a new schedule was made up about a month ago, she was asked to work nights an extra week and she agreed.  Asked if she would like to go to a home nearby to wait, she shook her head no.  “I want to be here,” she said.  See related stories HERE and HERE.

 

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