When Prince George’s County Police Lt. Scott Finn noticed the column of black smoke rising from a nearby building, he ignored the fact that he was not wearing any protective fire gear or that he had never been involved with a building fire before.
“When I got there, smoke and fire had already spread and was on the second and third floor of the building and was coming through the roof,” Finn said.
Finn, a 17-year veteran of the Prince George’s Police Department, reported the fire that occurred at 7:45 p.m. Tuesday night at a District Height’s apartment building. He entered the building and retrieved many residents from their homes. All residents managed to get out safely without injury — largely due to the bravery shown by Finn and Cpl. Ricky Adey.
Finn said the hardest part of the night was having to accept that he could not save two dogs he saw trapped on a third-floor balcony. He first noticed the dogs when he heard “blood-curdling screams and yips and yelps” coming from above. It was an adult pit bull and a puppy frantically searching for a way off the balcony.
“The dogs were screaming,” Finn said. “I tried to go up. I grabbed a hold of the one railing on the first floor, but the railing was already so hot that it burned my hand. I can only imagine what the dogs were going through at that point.”
Finn focused on saving the people he could access. Some residents were woken from sleep, while others with illegal pit bulls in their apartments were at first hesitant to exit the building with the officers. Finn and Adey systematically removed every person from the building, beginning with those closest to the fire.
“You go into autopilot,” Finn said. “You know what you have to do, and you know what your limits … I knew I could save people who were in the lower units.”
Firefighters arrived at the scene and declared the fire extinguished within an hour. The cause of the fire is still under investigation by the Prince George’s County Fire and EMS Department, and damages have been estimated at $500,000. Thirty residents were displaced from the 21 apartments that were damaged.
