By SELWYN CRAWFORD / The Dallas Morning News
Dallas police Senior Cpl. Mike Magiera never did find the wrong-way driver he was looking for Wednesday night.
“We had other things to tend to,” he said matter-of-factly.
Yeah, like helping rescue several horrified and panicked adults and children from a burning condominium complex on Melody Lane near Northwest Highway.
The dramatic events began unfolding about 11 p.m., four hours before the end of Cpl. Magiera’s 10-hour shift – his first after being away on leave after the birth of his child.
Cpl. Magiera received a report of a person driving the wrong way on Northwest Highway. He responded but could find no sign of the illegal driver.
What he and another officer did see was smoke, a lot of it, coming from the nearby Hyde Park Condominiums in the 6200 block of Melody Lane.
“When we got to the condos, people were making ropes out of sheets and coming off the balcony,” said Cpl. Magiera, 31. “Fire was everywhere. There was lots of smoke.
“I didn’t hear any smoke detectors or smoke alarms, and people were screaming, ‘Help me!’ ”
Cpl. Magiera and Senior Cpl. James Browder tried to calm the residents, telling them that additional help was on the way. But Cpl. Magiera – a former volunteer firefighter in Ellis County – said he could tell from the growing intensity of the fire that they would need more immediate assistance.
“I ran into the first floor and the first thing I did was I located the manual fire alarm,” he said. “I yanked it – nothing happened. So we started banging on doors and telling people to get out.”
Cpl. Magiera said he then ran up to the second floor and again found the manual fire alarm. Again he pulled on it. Again, dead silence. So he banged on more doors and warned more residents, directing them to a stairwell as the black smoke grew denser. Then he went up to the third floor.
“This time, I yanked on the manual fire alarm so hard I ripped it right out of the wall,” he said.
It didn’t sound. He knocked on more doors and ushered a few other people to safety. Then, he said, the thick smoke made it difficult for him to breathe. And he grew disoriented.
“I thought, ‘OK, I’ve done as much as I can. I better get out of here,’ ” Cpl. Magiera said. “But right as I turned to go down the stairs, I hear screams, and it’s little kids yelling, ‘Help me!’ ”
He said he turned around and tried to make his way back to the source of the pleas, but the smoke was too thick. He told the three youngsters, who he estimated were between 5 and 8 years old, to drop to the floor and crawl toward him on their stomachs.
“That stuff about crawling on your belly really works,” he said. “There was about two inches of clean air on the floor, and I was down there sniffing carpet.”
He said he pointed the frightened youngsters toward a stairwell and safety. But then he heard the children’s grandmother calling for help.
“She was frozen in her apartment,” he said. “She kept screaming, ‘I can’t walk. I can’t walk.’ And she was holding a 4-year-old.”
Cpl. Magiera said Cpl. Browder grabbed the child, and then he and another officer, Chad Mraz, grabbed the woman and dragged her down the stairwell. Even doing that, he said, was perilous.
“It was just pitch black,” Cpl. Magiera said. “The whole stairwell was like walking down a chimney, like someone was burning tires under you.”
Cpl. Magiera said the woman, whose name he never learned, eventually walked on her own after her rescue.
By then, firefighters had arrived, but it took them five hours to bring the flames under control. Fire officials said the blaze caused $400,000 in damage and displaced about 100 people, but no firefighters or residents were injured.
That surprised Cpl. Magiera.
“I’m shocked that everybody made it out because there were a lot of doors that we couldn’t get to because of the smoke,” he said.
The corporal said he was never scared during the ordeal, but he said he was upset – and remains upset – that the building’s manual fire alarms did not operate.
“If those manual fire detectors had gone off, we could have gotten a lot of people out a lot faster,” he said. “Somebody really needs to look into that.”
Deputy Fire Chief Joe Pierce, who was on the scene Wednesday night, said his staff checked the apartment complex’s remaining manual fire alarms, known as pull stations, Thursday and found only two that did not operate. Fire officials will be stationed at the complex until they’re repaired.
“We don’t really know because we can’t re-create it because there’s too much damage,” Chief Pierce said of the alarms that didn’t work Wednesday night. “But there was a lot of fire in the area near the electrical panel so there is a chance it may not have worked because the electricity was out. The pull stations do operate on electricity.”
No one answered the phone at the Hyde Park office.
Cpl. Browder, 33, credited his colleague for keeping a cool head.
“I think the real credit should go to Magiera,” Cpl. Browder said. “He’s the one who put it out on the radio, he led the way inside, and he was the one who tried to sound the fire alarms.
“He was thinking a whole lot more clearly than I was.”
Lt. Jesse Garcia, a spokesman for Dallas Fire-Rescue, said the police officers’ quick actions – including making the 911 call reporting the fire – were crucial in the rescue.
“It’s a great help to us, because one of the hardest parts of our job is locating victims,” Lt. Garcia said.
Thursday evening, the low-key Cpl. Magiera was back on the beat after getting two hours’ sleep. He spent much of the earlier part of the day dealing with media calls and preparing his home for sale.
And while he said his wife, Stormy, also a Dallas police officer, is proud of him, he eschewed the hero tag in true Joe Friday fashion.
“No, I’m not a hero,” he said. “I’m just doing my job.”