The maintenance crew helped save 181 units from the flames.
They helped save the complex from both flames and looters by using fire extinguishers, stomping embers and doing hourly patrols of the grounds.
“You look at it like, how did this happen? How could we still be here?” asked maintenance manager for Anjou Club, Ryan Erickson.
A four man maintenance crew had about 20 minutes to evacuate over 400 residents from the Anjou Club apartment complex on September 8th.
“Basically, we asked an officer if we should start evacuating and he said ‘if it were me, I would,” said Erickson.
Damian Aney is one of the maintenance assistants.
Aney says he ran around knocking on doors, warning tenants about the fast approaching Almeda Fire.
“It’s almost kinda like second nature, you know? It’s not something you really think about, just as soon as it started happening you just wanna move, so you just start running door to door knocking – I actually scraped the skin off 3 of my knuckles just from knocking so much,” Aney said.
Once the tenants left, the crew turned sprinklers on and attempted to grab all they could before getting out themselves.
“A lot of my friends that live here were at work at the time and couldn’t get back in, so I’d go to their house (after everyone evacuated) and grab their belongings, whatever they described,” said Aney.
Erickson says one maintenance worker, named Ross, came back to the complex that night to check on things.
He says though the complex was still standing, embers and small fires still burned around the 14-acre complex.
“He started bucketing water out of the hot tub and the pool, so he was just bucketing water out onto some these shrubs still burning and smoldering on the bottom. So once that got kinda tiring I just said go around and grab fire extinguishers on the property, start circling the property,” said Erickson.
He says once the rest of the maintenance crew came back days later, the work continued.
This time, they worked to keep looters at bay.
“We put some flashing lights on a couple vehicles and placed them throughout the property to make it seem like there were more of us than that and, you know, we kinda posted up as a security detail per se,” said Erickson.
Three weeks later, the work continues… at a much slower pace.
Erickson says they’re focusing on cleaning up the grounds and getting rid of fire debris.
“We’re insanely blessed, the firefighters held the line and did an amazing, amazing job.”
One apartment building sustained partial heat damage, but will be saved.
Bushes and trees around the complex are also singed – but the structures are safe.
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