Lake Placid Volunteer Fire Department trucks on the scene after an early morning fire at Greenwood Apartments on Thursday, May 1. (Provided photo — Justin Roy)

LAKE PLACID — When they were roused out of bed in the early morning on May 1, Lake Placid Volunteer Fire Department members John Fagan and Ciana Cerruti didn’t expect to be saving someone’s life.

The department responded to an automatic fire alarm activation at 89 Greenwood Street, a multi-unit apartment building in Lake Placid, at 4:37 a.m. They were also alerted by a 911 call about smoke at the same location.

The first truck arrived on the scene at 4:40 a.m, and Fagan and Cerruti observed there was a lot of smoke in the building, particularly on the first floor. They quickly worked to identify where the fire was, starting on the first floor, which was thick with smoke. The source was a fire burning in one apartment.

That’s when they realized someone was in the apartment, barely conscious and lying on the floor, right next to the fire.

“It was hairy,” Fagan said. “There was no visibility, we could just barely see her.”

Cerruti and Fagan each grabbed an arm as the fire began to roll over their heads.

“I said, ‘We gotta go. We gotta go. We gotta go,'” Fagan continued. “So we pulled her out of the apartment into the hallway.”

They had to drag the resident about 40 feet to get to a stairwell that wasn’t as smoky, then out of the building, where Lake Placid EMS was standing by to provide medical care. Cerruti and Fagan had initially entered the building without the protection of a hose line — reflecting on this after the fact, Fagan said that if they had waited for the hose, the resident likely would have died.

“Our first priority was to get the individual out of the building as fast as possible,” Cerruti said. “We will deal with the fire afterwards.”

Department members then went back into the apartment and extinguished the fire, which had started in the kitchen and was spreading quickly. Meanwhile, other members helped evacuate other residents to get them away from the smoke. They even managed to get multiple cats out of the building, Fagan said, including one belonging to the resident who was pulled out.

LPVFD responded to the fire with three trucks and 12 members and was aided by members from Saranac Lake Volunteer Fire Department, while Wilmington Fire and Rescue stood by at Lake Placid’s station.

All departments were back in service by 9 a.m. and the cause of the fire is currently under investigation by the Essex County Office of Emergency Services.

“It definitely feels good that we were able to get there in time and help everybody,” Fagan said. “There wasn’t many of us, so we worked together.”

“Teamwork was a big thing at the end of the day,” Cerruti said. “That’s what it came down to.”

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Ongoing need for volunteers

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Both Fagan and Cerruti are Lake Placid natives. Fagan has been volunteering with the department for 25 years, whereas Cerruti began training and volunteering in 2022. She only finished her interior training about a year ago, and it was her first time pulling someone out of a building.

“Everyone’s been telling me, it’s actually pretty rare around here to have that type of thing happen,” she said. “I’m just grateful that she survived and she’s doing okay. That’s the best thing we can ask for.”

Fagan decided to volunteer with the fire department because he saw so many people around him doing the same. It’s no coincidence that the fire department roster is stacked with family members, Chief Mike St. Louis added. Cerruti said she has always had respect for firefighters.

“I, in general, always had a respect for our policemen, our military and our firemen,” she said. “And I knew that one day I was hoping to do incredible things like those people. So I ended up here. And I’m still here.”

The department is currently operating with 29 volunteers, including a few auxiliary members. This is about half of what would be considered full strength for the department. St. Louis said when he joined the department, there was a waiting list of about 18 people — beyond the 60 members the department was capped at.

“You had to wait for someone to pass away, get done, retire,” he said.

Members have a lot of ideas about what has changed. It’s gotten harder and more expensive to live here, Fagan said, and people might be working multiple jobs to afford it. There are also so many other things to do, and volunteerism isn’t always a priority.

“If it’s sunny and they got a boat, they’re going on a boat,” St. Louis said. “Simple as that.”

Volunteering with the fire department is a big commitment, and the training hours have become more demanding over time. However, moments like the Greenwood Apartment fire remind them why they do what they do: to serve the community and save lives. Cerruti said it’s time for people like her, from a younger generation, to step up.

“At this point, it just comes down to who’s willing to put in the time,” she said. “Which is hard, but that’s the main thing that it comes down to.”