Man Recalls Being Saved From Fire in His Southeast Washington Apartment – ​​NBC4 Washington

As the flames tore through the Oxford Manor Apartments on Bowen Road Southeast last Tuesday, James Webb, 73, was in dire straits. The toxic smoke that seeped into his apartment reached his fragile lungs, weakened by COPD and other health problems. He is also legally blind.

He believes the knock on his door and two men he didn't know saved his life.

“They told me, 'You have to get out of here,'” Webb said. “They tried to pull me, but I was holding on to things.”

Webb said he would like to thank the two men who saved his life.

After he was released from the hospital, reality set in: replacing medications that cost him $200, even with insurance.

Hen said he was grateful to the apartment complex managers who arranged for him to stay at a hotel and then offered him a vacant apartment at another complex run by the same company.

It is some distance from Oxford Manor, where he has lived since the early 1990s. It is a place he knows well and is able to travel to despite his disability.

He doesn't understand why he isn't among the displaced tenants placed in empty flats at Oxford Manor.

It could be a long stay in this new, unfamiliar place with nothing more than a bed and his rescued photos of his late wife and their children.

“Everything is really unusable,” Webb said. “There's smoke damage, water damage and the ceiling has fallen in.”

Webb shook his head as he thought about the cause of the fire — illegal fireworks, authorities said — that caused so much loss and long-term inconvenience for nearly 80 people.

“They had these things, they kept pulling the trigger and shooting stuff, and they started the fire in the building next to mine,” Webb said.