The Ontario County Sheriff’s Office and half-a-dozen Canandaigua area fire companies responded yesterday when fire hit a unit at the Liberty Apartments on Parkside Drive in Canandaigua.
Deputies arrived to find 60-year-old Donald Hires in a wheelchair on the patio outside his smoke-filled apartment, but unable to get over the patio railing. They lifted him to safety and firefighters went in to find the furniture burning and heavy smoke. They evacuated the other residents as a precaution and extinguished the fire.
Hires was flown by Mercy Flight helicopter to Strong Memorial Hospital in Rochester for treatment of burns and smoke inhalation. A resident who tried to get into the apartment to help Hires was also treated for smoke inhalation.
The cause of the fire is under investigation.