Photos: Channel 7On Jan. 6, 2009, Arlington County firefighters rescued 16 people from the windows of a burning apartment building near Rosslyn. There were a number of injuries and several victims required hospitalization .
At least two others jumped, according to news reports, and witnesses said a child was dropped or passed from a window before firefighters arrived at the two-alarm blaze. Engine 103's crew carried an unconscious man from the building.
The fire, which was reported at 4:47 a.m., started in the basement storage room of the three-story building in the 1500-block of Fairfax Drive. Firefighters from Fort Myer and Fairfax County, as well as paramedics from the City of Alexandria, were also dispatched with the crews from Arlington County.
Battalion Chief Benjamin Barksdale, quoted by Channel 7, said residents ``couldn't make it down the main entrance - all the smoke from the basement had been pouring out into the stairwell. … There was no way they could have come down the stairs.''
The evening before, many of the same firefighters attended a two-alarm blaze that gutted a townhouse at 1180 North Vermont Street near Ballston.
