Roommate Saved From Lamp-Ignited Flames

A quick-thinking Newport Beach man roused one of his roommates from a deep sleep early Sunday and helped him escape a fast-moving fire started by a halogen light under the sleeper’s bed, authorities said.

Jason Lucier awoke about 5:30 a.m. to the smell of smoke in the four-bedroom upstairs duplex unit and quickly yelled for the four other people inside to flee, Newport Beach fire officials said. Once outside, Lucier realized that Tony Bartel was still inside.

Lucier raced back upstairs with a garden hose, woke Bartel and tried to extinguish the flames in the bedroom, fire officials said. But both men fled as the flames spread.

Bartel escaped with singed hair. The other roommates in the unit, on 35th Street along the Balboa Peninsula, were unhurt.

“[Bartel] is so lucky one of those guys woke up,” Fire Capt. Glenn White said.

“He was so sound asleep that he would have breathed in too much carbon monoxide in a few more minutes. [Lucier] really saved his life.”

Once firefighters arrived, they contained the blaze to Bartel’s bedroom. Eighteen firefighters from Newport Beach and Costa Mesa responded to the fire, which caused an estimated $5,000 in damage to the duplex and $2,000 to items inside.

Investigators said the halogen light under Bartel’s bed ignited clothing lying on top of it.

White said the occupants were lucky to escape with their lives, considering that there were no smoke detectors in the upper unit of the duplex.