‘My airway was badly burned’: London fire victim recovering from coma recounts escape from blaze

A London, Ont., resident seriously injured in an apartment fire is speaking out after a harrowing escape.

Jamie Wareham is recovering at home after suffering serious injuries in a blaze at 241 Simcoe St. on April 4. Wareham spent more than three weeks in hospital.

“My airway was really badly burned,” they told CTV News London.

The ordeal began around 6:30 a.m. when alarm bells sounded in the building operated by London-Middlesex Community Housing.

False alarms are common, Wareham said, so they took a few minutes to decide whether to evacuate with two pet cats. Descending the stairs was slow, as they typically use a walker or wheelchair.

Around the eighth floor, Wareham realized the alarm was not false.

“The smoke was so thick that I couldn’t see anything,” they said.

Then, for an unknown reason, a door to the fire floor opened.

“It suddenly got extraordinarily hot — hotter than I had ever experienced,” Wareham said.

With pre-existing health issues, Wareham knew the situation was critical.

“At that point, I knew that I had maybe 30 seconds before passing out from smoke inhalation,” they said.

Wareham used their remaining energy to call out to firefighters, who came to the rescue. They were helped down the remaining flights of stairs and taken to hospital by ambulance.

Wareham later learned they had suffered burns to their throat just above the vocal cords and were placed in a medically induced coma for several days.

“They were trying to protect my airways until I recovered enough to breathe,” they said.

Released from hospital a few days ago, Wareham is now working to heal their voice with the goal of returning to a local choir.

In the meantime, they are also trying to find a man experiencing homelessness whom they passed in the stairwell before being rescued.

“He was on one of the higher floors, well above the fire, and he was not waking up to the alarms,” Wareham said.

Wareham expressed gratitude to emergency responders and building staff for ensuring residents got out safely, but said more fire safety education is needed.

“It’s so much hotter and more dangerous than people realize,” they said. “It took one or two breaths for me to end up with second-degree burns in my throat.”

At the time of the incident, nine people were initially taken to hospital, five of them in critical condition.

The cause of the fire remains undetermined, according to the London Fire Department.