BALTIMORE — It was 5 a.m.; he was barely awake yet. But when Billy Sillaman saw a fire across the street, his instincts kicked in.
Not his survival instincts - those would have prevented him from running into a burning building, which was exactly what he did. His instinct to help drove him to enter the smoke-filled home on Keswick Road in Hampden, and rescue a woman and her dog. But her husband was still stuck inside,
"So I went in there, couldn’t see, it was pitch-dark. I kept hearing his voice. I went and I felt him, and went around him and said, “I’m gonna pick you up.’ He was in [sic] a cane. And I picked him up," he recalled to WMAR-2 News' Elizabeth Worthington on Wednesday.
Billy Sillaman recalls the events from the fire
Their's wasn't the only home on fire.
"So I went to the other house; there was another older lady there, and she was trapped between her metal door and her other door, she couldn't get it open. So I tried to force it open, and some other lady came and tried to help me," Sillaman said.
Once firefighters arrived, they used a crow bar to get the door open and rescue the woman.
Sillaman went to the hospital to be treated for smoke inhalation.
Eventually, the fire spread to 10 row homes.
"I was able to grab my cats from under the bed and get out the back," recalled Alaina Grimm. "We were just watching it spread across the roofs and black smoke was just billowing out of all the top windows."
One of the homes collapsed. The couple inside did not survive. Their identities have not been released, but neighbors tell us it was an elderly couple, and at least one of them had mobility issues. A man who walks his dog along Keswick Road shared how the husband would sit outside and feed the squirrels and the dogs who walked by. His pup loved walking by their home.
The Baltimore City Fire Department could not yet provide us with a total number of displaced residents. Pastor Jim Muratore at St. Luke's Church on the Avenue confirms everyone is either staying with family or friends, or at a hotel through the Red Cross. The church is one of several community organizations collecting donations. Thepastor asks for either monetary donations, or men's clothing, as they say they already have plenty of clothes in their Thrift Shop.
We met Lavinia Edmunds as she dropped off donations at St. Luke's.
"I just wanted to do something. I felt like - these people had suffered such loss, their clothes, their home, and two people in the community. Even though I didn’t know them, I felt really connected."
"The neighbors have been so helpful," Grimm said. "A lovely lady over here let us all kind of have run of her house yesterday so we had a place to charge our phones, and food, and a place to sit. People across the street gave us blankets yesterday, and coffee and water, and the [Pathway Fellowship] church has been so great letting us - I’m storing stuff there until I can get it moved."
Local restaurant Blue Pit BBQ & Whiskey Bar is hosting a fundraiser this Sunday from 3-9 p.m. 100% of the sales that day will go towards the victims.
The Hampden Community Council also teamed up with St. Luke's Church, Hampden Highlights, and American Legion Post 2 to organize a collection. You can donate funds at this Venmo account, or in-person at Truist Bank. The information is below.
Investigators from the fire department and the ATF were on the scene all day Wednesday combing through the debris. The cause is still under investigation.
