Katie Kull
St. Louis Post-Dispatch
（MCT）
Jan. 14—ST. LOUIS — A St. Louis firefighter was killed and another injured Thursday after the roof of a home collapsed during a fire in north St. Louis.
Firefighters were called before noon to the 5900 block of Cote Brilliante Avenue in the Wells-Goodfellow neighborhood, according to the department. There, crews saw a fire consuming the 2.5-story building, long designated as vacant by the city.
消防员们在一楼的火焰中吹掉了火焰，并检查了在第二层的时候，他们决定回头，因为火灾越来越强烈的火灾，Dennis Jenkerson表示。
As they turned to leave, the building’s roof and top story collapsed, burying Benjamin Polson, who died at the scene. Another firefighter was injured, Jenkerson said.
“他们做出了正确的决定：让我们离开。不幸的是，由于建筑物的状况，他们陷入崩溃，“Jenkerson说。
幸存的消防队员被运到了一个地区医院。Jenkerson说这个人有意识和呼吸。
Polson joined the department in November 2019, according to city salary records.
“There’s no words to describe what the feeling is right now amongst the St. Louis Fire Department,” Jenkerson said. “The fire department is a huge family. There’s a lot of relationships on the inside that are involved here from sons to fathers. This kind of event weighs tremendously heavy on the entire department.”
波尔森致敬和团结的表达，来自地区警察和消防部门的社交媒体。
The initial call said the building was vacant, but the chief said it wasn’t clear whether anybody was living there, “legally or illegally.”
Jenkerson表示，城市消防员定期回应建筑物中的火灾，其他部门可能无法考虑进入安全，但该部门搜索房产，因为圣路易斯的人们经常留在空置和摇摇欲坠的建筑物中以保持温暖。
“We get paid to protect lives. We get paid to take a risk, and you know, it’s hard to tell somebody on the street who is yelling and screaming at us that there might be someone in there, ‘Well, this risk might be too great,'” Jenkerson said. “So we take the risk, and unfortunately, terribly, the risk we took today wasn’t worth it. We lost a firefighter.”
The building at 5971 Cote Brilliante Avenue was built in 1895, according to city records. It is listed on the city’s vacant building registry and has been designated by the city as vacant since at least 2004, the records show.
It is one of roughly 10,000 structures tagged as vacant by the city’s vacancy collaborative.
The home was condemned in 2019 after inspectors found six major violations. Several notices were sent to the owners, who list an address in Fordyce, Arkansas, and the case was then referred to court. City staff visited dozens of times to cut grass, chase rats away and board up windows and doors. Over the years, more than a dozen separate charges, $108 apiece, were sent to owners for mowing.
无法达成业主进行评论。
Ameren的一个来源表示，多年来没有任何账户在地址中活跃。
Katesha Carter，他的祖母在隔壁的隔壁上享受到该物业，并且被迫在火焰期间逃离她的家，她的家人抱怨多次破旧的房子。
“We would call the city and someone would come board it up, and the squatters would come take it back down,” Carter said.
“If someone would have done something a long time ago then maybe this wouldn’t have happened,” she added, referring to the death of the firefighter.
Jenkerson说，该建筑被视为火灾后的总损失。隔壁的家庭也有一些火焰伤害。
Post-Dispatch reporters Janelle O’Dea and Taylor Tiamoyo Harris contributed to this report.
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