WINSLOW — A resident of a downtown apartment building was helped through a window to safety by police Thursday morning after her apartment filled with thick smoke from a cooking fire.

A caller reporting a smoke alarm going off brought emergency personnel to a four-unit building at 34 Monument St. shortly before 10 a.m. Fire Department officials think smoke from a cooking fire in a first-floor apartment set off the alarms.

Firefighters were checking the apartment and ventilating the building with a high-powered fan about 10 minutes after being called to the scene. There was no apparent structural damage as a result of the fire, Winslow Fire Capt. Rocky Gravel said.

Other residents already had left the building, but Christie Mann, in whose first-floor apartment the fire is believed to have started, was trapped in a back bedroom, according to Winslow police Lt. Joshua Veilleux.

Winslow Officer John Veilleux — no relation to Joshua — went into the building’s common hall area and tried to get to the second floor after a report that a man was still on the second floor, but the officer was overcome with thick smoke at the top of the stairs. The man eventually came out of the building on his own.

Meanwhile, Joshua Veilleux had to remove the back window screen and help pull Mann out of the apartment window, which was about six feet off the ground.

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Mann, who was coughing, was given an oxygen mask at the scene by emergency medical personnel from Delta Ambulance. Mann was taken to the hospital for evaluation, Joshua Veilleux said. Firefighters rescued her dog, a boxer, from the apartment.

A second-floor resident, who would identify herself only as Max, said she was working on her computer when she heard the alarm sound. After looking through her apartment door and seeing smoke in the hallway, she left the apartment, banged on her neighbor’s door to alert him, then fled downstairs and banged on Mann’s door, too, but didn’t get a response.

Max said she could see smoke filling up the front part of Mann’s apartment, so she got out of the building and called 911 and Keystone Management, the company that owns the building.

All the residents who were in the apartment at the time of the fire were evacuated. A family with two small children living on the first floor were not at home at the time of the fire, Max said.


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