photo by: Contributed: Beth Mersman

Flames rolling out of a house that two Lawrence Police officers assisted in efforts to rescue a 2-year-old child inside on Feb. 23, 2022, in Garnett, KS.

The job of a Lawrence police officer isn’t confined to Lawrence, and some days it is not even confined to traditional police work.

There are those rare days they come home feeling more like a firefighter.

Lawrence police officers Alex Brittain and Stephen Ramsdell can attest to the twists and turns after an investigation on Feb. 23 took them to Garnett, a town of about 3,200 people 60 miles south of Lawrence.

While conducting an interview with a woman outdoors at about 3:30 p.m., one of the two officers — they don’t remember which at this point — uttered an unexpected question.

“Oh my god, is that your house?” one of the officers exclaimed.

The woman, Bailey Weide, turned to look and saw the fire was billowing out of her bedroom window, she said. She told the officers that her son Brighton — 2 years old — was inside the house.

What came next — multiple dashes inside the burning home– would give the two Lawrence police officers a greater appreciation for firefighters, and a thankfulness that they got to return home to tell about it.

“I have had people try to grab my gun when I’m arresting them,” Brittain said. “But I have never been so scared. Just the feeling of drowning and the heat walking into a door and just getting lit up with the actual flames, that is something I’ve never dealt with or even thought about.”

•••

When Weide told the Lawrence police officers that her son was in the house, Brittain said the flames already were jumping as high as 8 feet into the air out of the window.

He knew they had to act fast. A local officer was on the scene for an unrelated reason and they asked him if he could radio for help. The local police officer told them he wasn’t wearing a radio at the time. Brittain and Ramsdell were wearing radios but weren’t sure they would be of any help.

“That creates a different kind of problem because we’re an hour away, and we need help right now,” Brittain said. “Our radios go to the dispatch here (Lawrence). It’s not like a cellphone where you call 911 and it goes to whichever one’s closer.”

Brittain and the mother rushed for the front door of the house. Brittain opened the door and stepped inside and was met with heat and flames pushing him back, burning his hair and beard, he said. The fire was in the bedroom right next to the front door, preventing them from moving farther into the house.

Overcome with fear, the mother commanded the officers to break a door or a window to get inside but didn’t give them much information as to how to find her son once they were inside, Brittain said.

The officers ran around to a side door on the house and Ramsdell led the charge to break the door open. At this entrance, instead of flames, the officers met a wall of thick smoke. Ramsdell dropped to the ground and started to crawl into the house.

photo by: Contributed: Lawrence Police Major Hayden Fowler

Garnett City and Anderson County fire crews work to put out a fire that two Lawrence Police officers assisted in efforts to rescue a 2-year-old child inside on Feb. 23, 2022, in Garnett, KS.

Brittain said at this point he tried his own radio, and to his surprise, it worked. He was in contact with dispatchers in Lawrence, 60 miles away. He relayed the situation over the radio and instructed the Lawrence dispatcher to contact the local fire department and to send help right away, Brittain said.

Brittain and Ramsdell are no fire firefighters, but they knew the situation was dire.

“The first time I went in, I didn’t know where I was going,” Ramsdell said. “I couldn’t really see, even staying low. It was just kind of like you were underwater in blackness.”

By opening the front and side doors, the officers had inadvertently created a wind tunnel through the house that was pumping smoke and heat, making it nearly impossible to see what was happening inside, Brittain said.

Brittain followed Ramsdell into the house, but out of frustration he momentarily ignored his training and stood up to run deeper into the smoke.

“I just remember it being like this solid mass in my lungs,” Brittain said. “And I was like, ‘We can’t crawl — we got to get this kid right now.'”

•••

Smoke filled Brittain’s lungs, and he started to choke.

“It was so hot,” he said, while pausing to relive the scene. “And it was like I was drowning. But it was solid. And it burns.”

Brittain backed out of the house and into the yard, he said, retching and heaving to expel the smoke from his lungs.

“That about took me out and kind of made me my own casualty,” Brittain said.

photo by: Contributed: Anderson County Review

A fire that two Lawrence Police officers assisted in efforts to rescue a 2-year-old child from inside the house on Feb. 23, 2022, in Garnett, KS.

Ramsdell was left crawling through the blackness alone when he made the same mistake as Brittain. He took a deep breath, inhaling a large amount of smoke.

“What really angers me at myself is I just took a massive breath of smoke,” Ramsdell said. “One of the things that’s always drilled into you, if you’re running hot to a scene, like an officer needs assistance, and you’re driving lights and sirens, is you don’t want to overdrive. Because if you become a casualty yourself, you’re not helping anybody.”

Ramsdell too, then backed out of the house in hope of getting a breath of fresh air before making another attempt. As he did, the mother passed him by running into the house.

Without missing a beat, Ramsdell followed her back inside, knowing she knew how to get to the child inside. He said he followed her to the boy’s bedroom and stood in the doorway, shining his light into the darkness.

“I was yelling at her to come toward my light, where I was in the doorway,” Ramsdell said. “Whether that helped her or not, I couldn’t say.”

•••

Meanwhile, Brittain recovered his senses enough to try another route into the house.

He ran around to the back door where local police and fire crews had arrived and were working to make an entry. But his partner was still in the house, so he rushed back to the side door where he had last seen him.

He arrived just in time to see the mother coming out of the house.

“And that’s where I see the mom coming out with her child,” Brittain said. “The best way for me to describe this child was like, pulling an angel out of the depths of hell.”

“I mean, this whole place was black. Smoke was coming out everywhere. And this kid, he had beautiful blonde hair, and he wasn’t burned, there was no, like, ash on him at all. And mom’s face was like, almost totally black from the ash, some of her hair was burned.”

A moment of elation and relief washed over Brittain as he saw the boy for the first time. But that brief repose lasted only a second as he looked around, unable to find Ramsdell.

“I immediately thought the worst, that he was a casualty inside, and I screamed his name,” Brittain said. “I was getting ready to go back and get him and I don’t know how that was going to work out. But I didn’t see my partner, and I had to get him.”

Ramsdell had been in the doorway of the bedroom as the mother found her son, and she passed by Ramsdell to exit the house. Ramsdell went to follow her but realized he had dropped his notebook when he was crawling through the kitchen when he first entered the house, he said. The investigator lingered in the kitchen long enough to recover his dropped notebook and then made his way out.

“I like my notebook,” Ramsdell said. “I wanted to make sure I had it.”

photo by: Contributed: Anderson County Review

Lawrence Police Officers Alex Brittain (left) and Stephen Ramsdell look on after helping a mother rescue her 2-year-old child from a burning house on Feb. 23, 2022, in Garnett, KS.

Reunited in the yard, the officers were surrounded by firefighters and local emergency crews. Brittain said a local officer was trying to question the mother after she had emerged with her child, but she was in shock and wouldn’t respond to the officer. Brittain repeated the officer’s question and asked her if anyone else was in the house, to which she replied she didn’t know and that the house was divided into apartments.

“I remember just looking up and feeling so helpless because if anyone else is inside there, they’re dead.” Brittain said. “I couldn’t let anyone else go back inside that house.”

•••

No one else was in the house, Garnett Fire Chief Wes Skillman determined after entering the home while it was still ablaze. The tenant in the other apartment was not at home when the fire broke out.

The volunteer Garnett Fire Department, along with Anderson County fire crews from Welda and Colony, worked on the fire for seven hours, Skillman said.

“It was dark, dense smoke and it was a pretty windy day,” Skillman said. “It was down in the single digits by the time we wrapped up that night.”

The house, which was built in the early 1900s, was a complete loss, and an investigation by the Kansas State Fire Marshal’s Office was unable to determine the cause of the fire, Skillman said.

After the fire, Brittain and Ramsdell drove themselves to the local hospital and received chest X-rays, and a doctor told them they both had inhalation burns in their throats, Brittain said.

The officers said they have spent time talking about the traumatic experience with each other and with other staff at the department. Ramsdell said he thinks that everyone deals with trauma differently and the resources at the Lawrence Police Department can address those different needs. But for Ramsdell, he often chooses to deal with difficult situations with humor, he said.

On that front, he’s helped Brittain gain a new nickname in the department.

“He’s earned the new nickname of Sawdust, because when he came out of the fire I thought someone had dumped sawdust on his head, but it was just the way his hair had burnt,” Ramsdell said.

Brittain spends some time thinking back to the hospital where he received treatments for those burns. While in the hallway of the hospital, he saw Weide. She was fine. Her son, now weeks later, continues to be physically healthy.

In that hallway, one much different than the one he and his partner had been in not long ago, he shared a simple thought with the mother.

“I hope one day your son grows up to find out how much his mom loved him,” Brittain said.

He has a chance now.

photo by: Contributed

Brighton, age 2