The meeting that saved lives; a hero out of uniform

Published July 21, 2014
By Staff Sgt. Brent Skeen
459th Air Refueling Wing Public Affairs

JOINT BASE ANDREWS, Md. -- To say that May 19, 2014 started out like any other day would be a lie.

Master Sgt. Lonnie McBride, law office superintendent for the Judge Advocate General's office at the 459th Air Refueling Wing here, was getting ready to leave for a meeting in Newark, Delaware for his civilian position as a software consultant for Neocase. The meeting started at 9:00 a.m., and Newark was more than a two-hour drive from his home in Alexandria, Virginia.

"It was a meeting I typically don't have," McBride said. "But if it wasn't for that meeting I was supposed to attend that morning -- I would have perished that day. Me and 16 others would have certainly perished that day. There is no doubt in my mind."

McBride stepped out of the door of his third floor condo, dressed in his business attire, overnight bag in hand. It was 6:35 a.m. Leaving after 7:00 a.m. would be a nightmare, due to the distance and traffic in Washington D.C. and Baltimore. Still, his window of comfort to arrive to his meeting on time was ticking away. He turned right and walked down the stairs.

Inside the stairwell, he noticed something; white smoke and the faint sound of an alarm.

"Not a ton of white smoke, but some white smoke," McBride recalls. "At first, I didn't put much thought into it. People are up, making breakfast. Someone probably burnt toast to set off someone's alarm -- no big deal."

McBride continued down the stairwell toward his car that was parked in front of the condo that housed 12 units.

"Right when I'm coming up to my vehicle, I had this strange feeling -I swear to God--It came over me like, something's not right," McBride said. "Because the thought prior to that was like 'no big deal, probably a toaster oven, I'm just going to get in my car and go about my business - and I need to hustle, because I'm already starting to push it, because it is at least a two hour drive to Newark'."

But McBride couldn't shake that feeling.

"I had to identify this source of this - just so I can feel right about the situation," McBride said. "I needed to make sure that everything is okay."

He put his bags in his car and headed back to the building to locate the source of the smoke.

He walked through the hallway of the first floor. He looked for smoke escaping through the seals of the doors or the vents on the wall that lead to the unit's dryer and oven fan.

There was nothing noticeable.He went upstairs to do the same for the second floor, and then the third.

Still nothing.

All the floors were checked and McBride did not see a source from where the smoke was coming from.

"It must be fine," he said. "But I still had a bad feeling about this."

He turned around and headed back down the stairs. But this time, the bad feeling that McBride had thought about shrugging off reared its ugly head.

"I saw a ton of white smoke," McBride said. "I had to find out where it was coming from. I knew it wasn't right."

McBride slowly walked down the hallway of the second floor, looking at the door seals and at the vent. He got to the last door on the right hand side and looked up at the vent. White smoke was pouring out, getting heavier by the second.

McBride immediately starts banging on the door.

Inside the unit was his neighbor, a nurse, who was sleeping on her couch, passed out after a long work shift.

As the banging and shouting from McBride continued from one side of the door, the neighbor on the other side slept - unaware of the fire and carbon monoxide building inside her home and threatening her life.

McBride's mind raced. Maybe no one was home; maybe they were running the dryer while at work, he said.

Still, he kept banging --shouting the same warnings over and over through the door.

"I said, 'Hey! There is a fire! Is anyone there? Can I help you?'" McBride said.

He looked up at the vent. The smoke was no longer white, but now a pitch black color -- thick and heavy, like someone threw a tire on top of a camp fire.

The banging continued -- harder than ever before.

This time, the banging from McBride woke up the sleeping nurse, who awoke to the shocking surprise of seeing her kitchen on fire.

"Suddenly, I heard the sound of struggles," McBride said.

Seconds pass, but it felt longer. He heard the person inside struggling at the door to unlock the deadbolt and the handle, he said.

"This girl opened the door, it was the wife, and she was covered in black soot," McBride said. "Her skin was red like she had first-degree burns."

To make matters worse, opening the door created a backdraft effect. The fire in the kitchen was creating pressure, and when the door opened, the fire raced toward the point where the pressure was released, said McBride.

"It was coming at us, so I said 'You gotta get out of here!'" McBride said.
McBride called 911 and told the operator they needed the fire department there right away because there was a major fire at the unit.

He gave the dispatcher the necessity information, such as the address, what he saw and what he thought it was, all while trying to control himself from panicking.

"I cut it short and hung up," he said. "I didn't have time, I had to get back to the building to bang on doors and evacuate the building because it was a massive freaking fire. It was going to spread, and people were sleeping."

McBride started banging on the doors of the first floor, alerting his neighbors to evacuate the building right away.

The fire was moving at a rapid pace. Since the smoke was traveling up, and trapped under the breezeway at the top of the building, McBride realized that the third floor needed to be the priority, he said.

"I hauled [butt] up to the third floor, and sure enough the third floor is engulfed with smoke," McBride said. "It's thick, it's black, you can't see, can't breathe. Nothing."
"It was too late to get to them," McBride said. "I just had to pray to God that the fire department would arrive in time to save the people on the third floor."

The fire department arrived and McBride informed them which unit the fire originated from, and that there were people trapped on the third floor.

The fire was extinguished, and the rescue attempt was successful. The firefighters rescued eight of the third floor occupants using ground ladders from several balconies within the building.

While the firefighters were trying to put out the flames, McBride called his clients in Newark.

"I said, 'I am not going to be able to make it to this meeting - I am literally watching my house on fire,'" he said.

The cause of the fire was from a faulty wire connected to an overhead light inside a kitchen cabinet. The constant flow of electricity ignited the wood cabinet, and on the stovetop there was a pot of cooking oil.

"So, when it hits that, it goes from a cabinet on fire to a ball of flames," McBride said. "And she's laying there."

"If not for the banging of the door, she would have died," McBride said. "Carbon Monoxide would have gotten her, and the whole building would have gone up."

"The only reason why I discovered that fire out of sure coincidence is because my clients set a meeting for 9:00 A.M.," McBride said. "We all would have died."

McBride credited his reaction to the fire to the 20 years of training he received in the Air Force and Air Force Reserve.

"I absolutely, without a doubt feel that the way I reacted to the fire was in large part due to the training I received in the Air Force," he said. "One of the things they train us is to remain calm, assess the situation, and think about what you need to do and prioritize."

"You are able to control the panic that wants to overtake you," McBride said. "You are able to control that and allow your Air Force training to really go through those steps."

"I am extremely thankful -- I am alive, McBride said. "This has had a fundamental change in my life. I am more appreciative of every day."

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