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Mother, Children Escape Burning Ladera Heights Apartment

LADERA HEIGHTS (CBSLA.com) – A quick-thinking mother and her two children jumped out of a second-floor window to escape a fire that engulfed their Ladera Heights triplex early Tuesday morning.

The fire was reported just before 1 a.m. in the 5300 block of West Slauson Avenue. Los Angeles County Fire crews responded to find heavy flames coming from both floors of the building.

Second-floor resident Carla Langley told CBS2 she awoke to hear a rumbling and initially thought it was an earthquake. Then she looked outside and saw the smoke and flames. She woke up her two 8-year-old twins and they all escaped from a window in the master bedroom.

"I went to the side window, punched that out with my hand... I started putting my fists through it, I ripped open the screen," Langley said. "I grabbed the comforter from my bed, threw it over the window, and then grabbed my daughter, dropped her out the window, grabbed my son Hunter, dropped him out the window. And then jumped out myself."

Langley said that prior to jumping out, she yelled to her neighbors for help, but none came.

"I looked out the window and started screaming, 'help, help.' Nobody came to help me. The neighbors were outside looking at me. And I'm like, 'help me, my babies, my babies, help me.' And then nobody did, so then I knew I needed to drop my kids."

Langley suffered cuts to her hands and arms and her children were taken to a hospital for evaluation, but all three are expected to be OK.

Crews extinguished the blaze before it spread to any surrounding buildings. Two people who reside in the first floor apartment were not home at the time.

The blaze has been deemed suspicious in nature. Los Angeles County Sheriff's arson investigators were on scene and the building was roped off.

A financial estimate of the damage was not confirmed.

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