Wallace E. Meyer, 31, bartender, saved Betty Lou Brunecke, 20, and died attempting to save one or more other persons from burning, Newlonsburg, Pennsylvania., January 24, 1949. While Miss Brunecke was asleep in a room on the second floor of a frame building, fire broke out in the basement; and dense smoke filled the hallway adjoining her room. Meyer and a family, consisting of the parents and their two adult sons, occupied other rooms on the second floor. Meyer entered Miss Brunecke’s room, pulled her from the bed to her feet, and told her the building was afire and to flee. He then ran into the hallway. Miss Brunecke following him choked from the smoke. As she groped for the door to return to her room, Meyer grasped her and pushed her to the head of an enclosed stairway near by. Telling her to follow him closely, Meyer descended the stairway in dense hot smoke to a small landing at an outside door on the first floor. Opening the door, he lunged down steps to the ground coughing violently. Miss Brunecke followed him out. After calling repeatedly to a neighbor in a house near by, Meyer handed Miss Brunecke a metal box of his personal effects and reentered through the door, from which dense smoke issued. Soon afterward the neighbor protected by a gas-mask ascended the stairway part way and heard Meyer calling and some one running about in the second-floor hallways. He inhaled some smoke, descended the stairway, and went out. One of the occupants was removed by men who placed a ladder to a window. About 10 minutes after Meyer reentered the building, firemen arrived; and Meyer was found lying on the landing just inside the door. He could not be revived. The others perished in the flames, which destroyed the building.
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