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Burned out Mail Tribune photos by Bob Pennell Smoke pours from an apartment fire, left, Thursday in Central Point. Firefighters say the blaze started in a trash can containing discarded smoking material. Fire destroys apartment in Central Point By J.T. BUSHNELL CENTRAL POINT - A woman lost her apartment and most of her possessions - but not her life - in a fire early Thursday. Nikki Sadler, 19, was sleeping in her living room when a fire started behind the closed door of the adjacent bedroom. Don Hickman, Fire District 3 deputy fire marshal, said it started just before 6 a.m. in a bedside trash can containing discarded smoking material. Sadler said she woke up to the smell of smoke. She immediately grabbed her two kittens and left the building. She then knocked on the outside doors of other tenants' apartments to notify them of the fire. The two-alarm fire destroyed her apartment. The other three apartments in the century-old building at 119 W. Pine St. received only slight smoke damage. No one was injured. Hickman said the fire could easily have been fatal. Fire crews said the single smoke detector they found in the building did not work. Bradley Hunter, who lives in the apartment above Sadler's, and Sadler both say they never heard an alarm. Because tenants were sleeping when the fire occurred, they were fortunate to wake up in time to escape, Hickman said. Hunter, 22, wasn't sleeping well and happened to wake up as the blaze was spreading below him. He saw smoke rising outside his second-story window but figured somebody was burning leaves. "I went to lay back down, and as soon as I got my head on the pillow my roommate came pounding on the door and said to get the F out and to grab the cat," Hunter said in front of the building, still in his pajamas. "I opened the door to the outside and a huge wave of smoke entered. I shut the door, stepped back and took a deep breath and wrapped my shirt around my face, then went out." Hunter said he did not panic because he remembered the instruction from fire safety courses in school. "I didn't go running down the stairs - I crouched low and went step by step, feeling in front of me and on the sides," he said. "I couldn't see anything." He called the fire department at 5:58 a.m. from a neighbor's phone. Firefighters arrived within a few minutes and kept the fire contained to Sadler's first-floor apartment. The blaze spread from Sadler's bedroom to the bathroom, kitchen and living room, Fire District 3 Battalion Chief Rod Edwards said. Sheet rock delayed it from spreading to other apartments in the building long enough for firefighters to stop it. Edwards said the complex was built in the early 1900s and has sawdust insulation in its outer walls. "This building should be on the ground," he said. "Our guys were really fast." He said five engines and 30 personnel responded to the fire. A Medford unit that assisted brought a thermal imaging device, which helped firefighters locate hot spots. The fire may have caused more than $70,000 in damage to the building and its contents, according to initial estimates. Edwards said it destroyed about 90 percent of Sadler's possessions, including electronic equipment, furniture and clothes. The landlord, Patricia Beck, has insurance on the building. Hunter said he is thankful his possessions are intact, but more so that he and Sadler are alive. "It's frightening to realize how close I was to losing everything. Unfortunately, she (Sadler) did," Hunter said. "I feel more for her than I do for myself. I'm just glad she still has her life." The Rogue Valley chapter of the American Red Cross is paying for a motel room in Medford for Sadler. Terry Haines, emergency medical service director at the Red Cross, said other residents of the complex are staying with family members. Hunter said he never thought he would have to use the techniques he learned in grade school and that the experience will remain with him forever. "One of my friends was out here telling me to relax," he said. "I said, 'How can I relax? You've never been through something like this, so until you have, don't tell me to calm down.' "You never think it will happen to you. Nobody ever knows what it's like until they experience it themselves." Mail Tribune Home | Ottaway Newspapers, Inc. | Dow Jones & Co., Inc. | Privacy | Contact Us Copyright � 2001 Mail Tribune, Inc.