Man rescued from Cedar Rapids apartment dies

The man rescued from a Cedar Rapids apartment fire has died, officials confirmed today.

Ernest Moomey, 59, died Thursday night at University Hospitals from injuries suffered in Thursday morning's fire, according to a news release from the Cedar Rapids Fire Department.

Delane Moomey said his brother Ernest, a lifelong Cedar Rapids resident, had been on disability the past few years after diabetes and its complications made it impossible to continue working as a truck driver. Ernest Moomey was doing some work for the Hawkeye Area Community Action Program, his brother said.

“He's very lovable,” Delane Moomey said of his brother.

Ernest Moomey said the family is making funeral arrangements.

Moomey was rescued from the fire Thursday morning by Ryan Walker, age 23, who saw smoke coming from a first-floor apartment at the two-story, 14-unit Creekside Apartments, 3009 12

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Avenue SW. Other neighbors also saw the smoke and were outside yelling that there was a victim still inside the apartment that was on fire.  Walker pulled Moomey out of the apartment unit just prior to firefighters' arrival.

Firefighters were dispatched at 7:19 a.m. and arrived on scene to find the victim, later identified as Moomey, outside the building near a concrete patio.  There was light smoke coming from the lower apartment.

Moomey was taken by ambulance to St. Luke's Hospital, and later transferred to University Hospitals in Iowa City with life-threatening injuries.

This is the second fire fatality in Cedar Rapids this year.

Fire investigators have determined that the fire originated in a waste paper basket between the bed and the chair in the apartment. There were no working smoke alarms in the apartment.  There was a bracket for the smoke alarm on the wall, but the actual alarm was absent, officials said.