by Lauren Krupar
Reporter
Hudson -- A month ago, Hudson native Kristin Pietrowicz, 25, was preparing to run in her first half-marathon Sept. 30.
Now, she and childhood friend and Hudson native Susan Thorne, 25, are recovering from injuries suffered when they jumped more than 35 feet to flee their burning North Carolina apartment and face months of physical therapy.
"If they had waited 10 seconds, they would have perished," said Dave Pietrowicz of Hudson, Kristin's father.
"The prognosis is both Kristin and Susan will be OK, but it'll be six months before they're walking," he added.
Both are recovering from compressed spinal fractures, broken ankles and broken heels suffered after the jumps. Both were in the hospital for more than a week after the fire, undergoing multiple surgeries.
Kristin, a student at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, is in a body cast, surrounded by stabilizers. She was flown to the Cleveland Clinic for care Oct. 8, released Oct. 10 and is now at home with her family in Hudson.
"It was just insane," Kristin said. "People need to realize they need to look for fire walls and sprinkler systems in an apartment building; they need to think about fire safety."
Susan, a high school math teacher, remains in North Carolina and is staying with friends. She also was released from the hospital Oct. 8.
Both, now in wheelchairs, plan to walk by January and Kristin is planning to run in the same half-marathon next year.
The two childhood friends were asleep in their second-floor apartment in Chapel Hill, N.C., Sept. 30 when Kristin woke at 2 a.m., almost 24 hours after she run in the Ashville 8K, to see a glow from her bedroom window and smoke coming through the door. In the time it took Kristin to find her cell phone, wake Susan and find their cats, Oscar and Phoebe, the fire engulfed the apartment's front entrance and smoke billowed around the door.
Kristin and Susan called 911 operators as the two and their cats escaped to a balcony. Their calls were the first of many alerting Chapel Hill 911 operators to the fire.
When they reached their balcony, the smoke was so dense the two friends could not see each other, even though they were three feet apart. The balconies below and next to them were all on fire.
Kristin urged Susan to jump, even though the 911 operator told them to wait until the fire department arrived. Then the balcony's glass doors exploded, showering the two with shards of glass.
"I knew we wouldn't make it unless we jumped," Kristin said. "I knew for a fact that if I didn't jump, I would burn or die of smoke inhalation. All I could think about was we had to get off the balcony. We had to live another day."
Kristin wrapped her cat in her blanket and jumped. Susan yelled to the 911 operator that she was jumping, threw the cell phone into the woods below and leapt off the balcony.
In "intense pain," Kristin turned to see Susan falling through the air. Behind her friend, the balcony they had stood on seconds before caught on fire.
The women rolled or crawled through the wooded ravine and away from the fire. A responding police officer found Kristin first.
The officer carried Kristin away from the fire, and a responding firefighter went in search of Susan.
"The fire started creeping toward the forest," Kristin said. "Susan said she thought she jumped from the fire only to die in the forest."
Susan was carried out on a stretcher, and the two were transported together to the University of North Carolina Hospital Trauma Center. Neither cat has been found.
The fire burned through the apartment building in five minutes. Bumpers and windshields of cars parked in front of the building, which housed 11 families, were melted from the heat.
While no one else was hospitalized, the fire caused the death of Kristin and Susan's downstairs neighbor.
No smoke detectors sounded, Kristin said.
Two hours after the fire, Dave Pietrowicz and his wife, Deb, woke to the sound of their phone ringing. Officials with the University of North Carolina Hospital Trauma Center told Dave that his daughter was in the hospital, being treated for injuries from an apartment fire.
The two and Susan's father were at Chapel Hill by 1 p.m. that day.
In the weeks after the fire, Dave said the support of the Chapel Hill community helped the women recover.
"Kristin worked at Caribou Coffee there while she was going to school," Dave said. "There were people visiting her that she didn't know their names, but she knew what they ordered each day."
Dave added he hopes the support will continue while his daughter recovers at home, where the family will begin replacing the material items lost in the fire.
The two lost all their clothes, computers, identification and cell phones. While two fire-proof boxes were recovered, the most sentimental item -- Susan's mother's wedding ring -- is lost.
"I came within seconds of losing my daughter," Dave said. "There's literally nothing that survived that fire except for them. There's just freaking nothing."
The most important things survived the fire, Kristin added.
"We made it out alive," she said. "I don't care about any of that stuff that burned up. I just want my cat back."
E-mail: lkrupar@recordpub.com
Phone: 330-688-0088 ext. 3146