METRO Transit Cops Rescue Fire Victims
Friday, January 23, 2009 4:50 PM
The day after saving a 68-year-old tourist who fell on a Washington, D.C. train track on Inauguration Day, our hero Officer Eliot Swainson - along with METRO Capt. Tim Kelly and a D.C. transit cop - saved residents from a burning apartment building.
Swainson, who has been the media darling from coast to coast this week and has appeared in more than 20 news outlets, had just completed an early-morning interview on the Mall in Washington for KTRK-Channel 13 in Houston.
Officer C. Dorrity of The Washington Metropolitan Transit Authority was driving Swainson and Kelly back to their housing when the three men saw a fire blazing at a row house.
"The row houses were on North Capital Drive. As we drove down the street, we saw the smoke coming from the building," said Kelly. "There was no one on the scene and no residents outside the building."
The three transit officers were the first responders on the scene."I just turned to the transit guy and said, ‘It's your turn to be a hero,'" Swainson told CNN.
They called firefighters and began pounding on doors to arouse residents and help them out of the building. 
"We couldn't get into the unit that was actually burned. There was just too much smoke coming out of there," recalled the 46-year-old Swainson, who snapped the photo above.
Firefighters rescued a teenage boy from the burning unit. A woman in that unit was killed before firefighters arrived. The photo on the right was taken by Kelly.
Only 22 hours earlier, Swainson had saved a Nashville woman who had fallen on a subway track in Washington, where record crowds surged through the Metro system to attend the inauguration. More than 1.1 million riders made more than 1.5 million trips on Tuesday.
Read about that rescue here.
Swainson was modest about his week's heroic deeds. "It's what we're trained to do," he said.
When a CNN reporter asked if he wears a shirt with an S on it, Swainson teased back, "Well, it's Swainson. So, it's always there."
Kelly called Swainson a very talented and well-trained officer. "He is the consummate professional in all that he does. I would expect no less from the performance he has shown over the last several days," said Kelly."He is a good representative of all the men and women of the METRO Police Department."
Above are more pictures of the fire. The first two were photographed by Swainson, the next four by Kelly. The last photo shows nine of the 10 MPD officers who helped the Washingotn transit agency with crowds on the subway. The photo was taken on Jan. 19 at the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial at Judiciary Square.