Fire races through Eastside triplex

June Casagrande

EASTSIDE -- At least four people and five pets escaped a blaze

Saturday morning that gutted a triplex at the intersection of Westminster

and Broadway.

“It was scary -- very scary,” said Marci Resch, 35, who was brushing

her teeth in her upstairs apartment when she noticed smoke billowing

outside her window.

A moment later, she smelled smoke and, phone in one hand dialing 911,

she ran into the stairway that connects her apartment to the other two

units to warn her neighbors.

“I was screaming, ‘The house is on fire,”’ Resch said.

She learned that a resident in the unit below her was already awake,

but her screams woke up the tenants in apartment A -- the unit that was

destroyed by the fire.

“I’m still freaking out about what happened, but I stop and think how

much worse it could have been,” she said. “We could have all been

sleeping.”

Resch, who shares the apartment with her fiance, Brian Roberts, first

carried her cat Oscar to safety. By the time she returned for her other

cat, Ivy, the apartment was so filled with smoke should couldn’t enter to

save her. Firefighters, though, were able to catch Ivy and they

administered oxygen to the cat at the site.

Resch was treated for minor injuries and another resident was treated

for psychological distress, but there were no serious injuries, said

Gregg Steward, battalion chief for the Costa Mesa Fire Department.

At least four people escaped, along with Resh’s two cats, a dog, a

rabbit and a bird.

Firefighters from Costa Mesa and Newport Beach who responded to to the

call extinguished the fire within 45 minutes.

The cause of the fire is not yet known, Steward said, and is under

investigation.

No estimates of the cost of the damage have been made.

-- Daily Pilot staff writer Mary A. Castillo contributed to this

story.