Conshohocken condo fire victims waited, worried

While flames consumed their homes, all they could do was wait and worry.

Today, residents displaced from the Riverwalk at Millennium camped at the Spring Mill Fire Company in Conshohocken, weeping on each other's shoulders, making frantic arrangements via cell phone, walking dogs, and eating donated pizza.

Marci Becker was home when the blaze broke out about 4:30 p.m. She saw black and white flashes dancing on her TV screen.

"The sun can't be doing that," she remembers thinking. Becker looked outside and saw flames that seemed "200 feet high."

As she dialed 911, someone banged on her door and told her the building was being evacuated. There was no time to react; she just ran.

"Nobody grabbed anything," said Becker, 70.

Becker's neighbor Roberta Melman was at a nearby store pharmacy when she got a call from her husband, Morty.

"He said to me, 'Honey, don't come back, because you can't get in. The building's on fire,' " Melman said.

The reality of losing her home began to hit Becker, who, like the Melmans, will stay with local family.

"I don't even have a checkbook," she said. "I have nothing."

Officials estimated they might need to accommodate up to 200 residents before the night was over. They said 375 were potentially displaced.

Ibrahim Kourbeh had lived with his girlfriend Lisa Malagoli in the complex for more than two years.

When he heard about the blaze, Kourbeh, 34, raced back from work in Fort Washington. His girlfriend, out with friends, was safe.

But he worried about Bruno and Gucci, their Yorkshire terriers. By the time he arrived, one building was already destroyed, and his building was just catching fire.

Kourbeh gave firefighters permission to break down his door to rescue the dogs, but they only found Bruno.

"I think the other dog ran under the table or something," Kourbeh said. "Everything else is replaceable."

Many of the residents who streamed into the firehouse - arriving on school buses or in their own cars - owned pets. Authorities said the rescued but unidentified animals were being housed at a local SPCA shelter, and some people worried about staying in hotels that do not accept pets.

While Malagoli fought off tears, Kourbeh wondered what came next.

"I don't know what we do at this point," he said.

Candace Schottland's parents, Jay and Carol Shrager, lived in one of the burned buildings. Her mother will stay with Schottland, but her father doesn't know that his home is gone.

Jay Shrager, owner of a food-distribution company, is in the Dominican Republic on business, and as of last night, his daughter couldn't reach him to break the bad news.

"The apartment's gone," said Schottland, 32. "People's cars are gone. People's homes are gone. The whole building's gone. There's nothing to go back to. So where do you go from here?"

Some considered themselves fortunate. Jonathan Zahler, 28, a doctor, had come home early to his wife and a meal of Indian food.

They had just sat down to eat when they turned on the news and saw what looked like the unfinished building next to theirs.

Zahler snapped a photo with his BlackBerry of angry orange flames leaping into the sky.

The couple grabbed a few things - wedding photos, their computers, a safe box - and ran.

"We're definitely going to end up with smoke and water damage," Zahler said, "but we're feeling pretty lucky."

A block from the fire scene, Marci Spampinato said that the restaurant she manages, Spamp's, had been busy during the fire. Her staff mobilized when someone ran in, frantic, "looking for water, anything we could do."

"We made 80 sandwiches and ran them down to the firefighters," Spampinato said. "We used as much bread as we had."