EVERETT — “Screaming for our lives.”
That’s how Victoria Troupe, 39, escaped the New Year’s Eve fire on W. Casino Road. She was standing at the window with her husband and their 6-year-old son. Behind them, their third-story apartment was filling with smoke. The front door was blocked by flames.
She thought they were going to die. Someone had to save them. She started screaming.
***
Vicki and Sean Troupe married 13 years ago, after bonding at a science fiction convention years earlier. He’s a veteran of the U.S. Marine Corps. She works in parts for John Deere.
The apartment on Casino Road, with two bedrooms and a den for $1,096 a month, was supposed to be a place they could stay while they recovered from setbacks.
When the economy collapsed, they both lost their jobs. They found new ones, but the pay wasn’t as good. Sean Troupe, 50, has health issues related to his military service and can’t work construction anymore.
After Henry was born, Vicki Troupe went back to school, earning an associate’s degree in applied science and accounting, and a certificate in project management.
In November 2014, they moved into the Bluffs.
***
On New Year’s Eve, the Troupes were watching college football, Michigan State vs. Alabama. Henry was playing on a Kindle, a Christmas present they all planned to share. At half time, Vicki Troupe started dinner. She took off her wedding ring and placed it in a cabinet. She put fries in the oven and began flouring chicken.
She went into her bedroom, and Henry came in running, saying, “Mama, Mama, there’s a fire outside my window.”
“I fling open the drapes and the banister is engulfed in flames,” she said.
She grabbed Henry’s hand and ran to call 911. The dispatcher told her to get out, now.
Vicki Troupe opened the front door, and smoke billowed in, setting off the detectors. She ran around the couch to check their deck. That exit was blocked by smoke, too.
The three of them ran to the dining room window.
She wrapped a hoodie around Henry’s face, to protect him from the smoke that already had engulfed their Christmas tree.
“I start screaming, ‘I have a baby,’ ” she said. “Henry is 6, but he’s my baby. I’m thinking, I have to get this urgency to get out.”
***
Sean Troupe knew to yell for ladders. Neighbors brought one over from the apartment complex next door, but it was too short. Then came another ladder. A firefighter climbed up, yelling to hand him the baby. “I knew we were going to be saved,” she said.
As she held Henry out the window, she told the firefighter, “I am not letting go until I know you have him.”
She then climbed down the ladder, followed by her husband. Behind them, “it was just black, just billowing black smoke,” she said. When she got on the ground, an Everett police officer was holding Henry, cradling him like an infant. People brought them phones, blankets. A man gave Vicki Troupe his shoes to wear. A pair of socks materialized. She and her husband watched the fire. She remembers crying for her cats.
“It was a blazing inferno,” she said. “It is stuff you see on TV.”
***
All three Troupes were given oxygen and taken to the hospital. Vicki Troupe remembers seeing her husband’s face in the ambulance. Even his lips were covered in soot.
Their cats, Moya, Sagwa and Aisha, all died. They were family and irreplaceable, Vicki Troupe said. That loss hurts more than the clothes, furniture and mementos. All the pictures are gone, except for the ones on Facebook. They did have renter’s insurance, which will help.
They’ve been staying with her mom, Wendy Chauteau.
The outpouring of help from the community has been a blessing, Vicki Troupe said. For more than two weeks, she wore a gray fleece peacoat with a hole in the pocket that someone gave her the night of the fire.
It took her a couple of weeks before she could talk about that night. Her friends had so many questions. They wanted to help and didn’t know how. As plans shifted into place and settled down, suddenly there was quiet again, she said. She keeps thinking back, trying to bring order to her memories, who was where and why.
There’s an abbreviated version of the story she shares: “There was a fire. It happened really quick. We lost everything. We had to scream for our lives.”
New routines are welcome, getting Henry to school and going back to work. The other day, Sean Troupe brought her a cup of coffee while she was getting ready, like he always did before, and that moment, something normal, stopped her.
Recently, Henry asked his mom about souls, and if they lost their souls in the fire. She told him that their souls are in their hearts.
Rikki King: 425-339-3449; rking@heraldnet.com.
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