WEST VALLEY CITY, Utah, April 1, 2019 (Gephardt Daily) — Officials have released a video of police officers rescuing a resident trapped in a second-floor apartment during an early morning apartment fire in West Valley City.
The two-alarm blaze at the Apartments at Decker Lake, 2184 W. 3100 South was first reported at about 2:30 a.m., the West Valley Fire Department tweeted.
Dozens of residents fled the fire, which caused $1 million in damages to the apartment complex while threatening two other nearby apartment buildings.
Rescuers scrambled to save one man who was trapped in a second-floor apartment. He managed to escape without serious injuries. Numerous people were treated for smoke inhalation but did not need to be transported.
On Monday afternoon, West Valley City Police released video recorded from body cameras of Officer Joshua Cook and Officer Oscar DeLeon.
“As you will see in the video, there are extraordinary and heroic actions on the part of several officers and a WVCPD supervisor,” the news release said.
The video begins with a police car crashing through a fence, narrowly missing a tree, then pulling up under the window.
Next the part of the video shifts to the hands-on portion of the dramatic rescue. It shows the perspective as officers work to persuade the man to jump from the building and, ultimately, help grab hold of the man and lower him to safety.
In the video, which runs just over three minutes, you can hear the officer yelling: “Go, go, come on, jump!” The officer then climbs onto a patrol car which has been positioned under the building so he can get closer to the man inside.
“I got you, I got you, come on, jump, you’re good, we got you,” he calls out to the man. He then assists the man as the man jumps from the window. “We’re good,” he says, “You OK?” He then asks him if anyone else is inside that apartment.
WVCPD tweeted that the fire was under control within 20 minutes, with assistance from South Salt Lake Fire and Unified Fire Authority. Eight units were damaged, and five units are a total loss, while four units in an adjacent building are flooded.
The cause is still under investigation, but appears to be electrical, the tweet said.
“Investigation has revealed the building was equipped with working smoke alarms,” the tweet said. “The alarms were properly tied together and functioning.”
Nice job officers.