Tragic anniversary: fire survivor offers thanks
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A year after Charlottesville firefighters pulled a young couple out of a raging fire in a Lewis Mountain Road apartment, 25-year-old Ashley Mauter is still recovering from her injuries– third degree burns covering most of the left side of her body requiring multiple skin grafts and lungs damaged by severe smoke inhalation.
Today, on the one year anniversary of the blaze that took the life of Mauter’s boyfriend, Brett Quarterman, Mauter and her family will appear at the Charlottesville Fire Department headquarters on Ridge Street to once again thank the men and women who saved her life and attempted to save Quarterman’s, and also to raise awareness of the importance of functioning fire detectors in every home.
“You see things like this in movies and you think, ‘It’s never going to happen to me,’” says Mauter, who along with Quarterman had decided to spend that night at their friend’s apartment rather than head home after a St. Patrick’s Day party. (The couple is pictured above at the party they attended the night of the fire.) “You just want to grab people and shake them. It happens. It doesn’t take much to put batteries in the detector.”
According to Charlottesville Fire Chief Charles Werner, the fire detectors weren’t functioning in the apartment at 2015 Lewis Mountain Road at around 3:30am on March 18 when the fire broke out. The cause of the blaze remains undetermined, and a detector in an adjacent apartment appeared to be functioning– it just didn’t awaken Mauter and Quarterman in time.
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