Salem native wakes neighbors as fire guts homes
A Salem native who lost everything in an early morning fire in the apartment building where he lived in Louisiana first woke his neighbors so they all escaped safely before the building was destroyed
Until the fire that gutted their homes in the early hours of Dec. 11, Dr. Paul R. “Rand” Dotson lived in a historic neighborhood of Baton Rouge known as Spanish Town, next to the state capitol.
Dr. Paul "Rand" Dotson awakened all his neighbors so they escaped safely from their burning apartment building in Baton Rouge, La.
The 42-year-old senior acquisitions editor for Louisiana State University Press lost his history books and all his personal belongings but managed to save his 5-year-old cockatiel, “Audrey Hepbird.”
“I woke up at maybe 2:30 or 3 a.m. Friday and smelled a little smoke but that didn’t really alarm me because I thought maybe the house next door had a wood fire going,” said Dotson in a telephone interview Tuesday morning from the home of a co-worker where he is staying temporarily.
“I heard this crackling and popping sound. I went out in the hallway and saw smoke coming through an attic door,” he said, and then started waking up the building’s other five residents.
Like most of them, Dotson escaped with only the pajamas he was wearing, and his pet.
“It could have been a million times worse,” said Dotson. “There are a few things left from the fire, mostly things made out of metal. It was a really great old apartment,” added Dotson, who said he had lived for six years in the apartments built as a duplex about 1918.
He said the the fire, which fire investigators believe started in the attic, “consumed the building pretty rapidly. The fire fighters had a little trouble getting water on the building.”
In spite of having smoke detectors in his apartment, none of them went off, Dotson said. “What I learned from this is people should maybe have smoke alarms in their attic. I had a lot of smoke alarms but they never went off because the smoke just went up,” he added.
Dotson called his parents, Paul and Carol Dotson of Salem, about 5:30 a.m. after the fire to tell them he was safe, his father said.
Rand Dotson graduated from Salem High School in 1986, earned his undergraduate degree at Roanoke College, his master’s at VPI and his PhD at LSU in 2003.
His name is also known in the Roanoke Valley because he wrote “Roanoke Virginia, 1882-1912: Magic City of the New South,” published by the University of Tennessee Press in 2007. In addition to his work with the LSU Press, he also teaches freshman history at LSU.
Meanwhile, he is looking at an apartment in the same neighborhood, he said. “It will be the easiest move of all time, cause I’ll be moving my car down the street.”
Dotson plans to come back to Salem to spend Christmas with his family
On Baton Rouge television reports, the fire was described as a two-alarm blaze with furious flames that quickly took the three apartments on the second floor and damaged the bottom three. The ground floor apartments were also damaged by smoke and water from firefighting efforts.
The building, said to have been built in the 1920s, was a total loss, according to news reports on WAFB TV and WBRZ.com in Baton Rouge, that have video clips of the fire.
Baton Rouge neighbors who were interviewed on local television said it was a miracle all six of them were able to get out alive. One said “They were beating on my door and shouting ‘Fire.’ ” A woman interviewed on WAFB said, “It’s pretty sad to see all our stuff gone but we’re grateful to be safe.”
According to news reports, it took firefighters about two hours to extinguish the fire. Their biggest concern was keeping it contained and away from other close-by buildings, said one firefighter. Fire investigators said foul play is not suspected.
