Child injured in apartment fire

Cedar Rapids firefighters rescued a 1-year-old girl from a second-floor apartment fire in southwest Cedar Rapids Thursday afternoon.

The child was still breathing when firefighters got her to an ambulance, and was rushed to St. Luke's Hospital with life-threatening injuries.

Cedar Rapids Fire and Police and ambulance personnel were dispatched to the Cedar Valley Apartments at 3000 J St. SW, apartment 801, at 4:33 p.m. after neighbors reported the fire and told authorities that there was a child trapped upstairs in the apartment

Cedar Rapids police officers were the first to arrive and were met by the child's grandmother, Lesia Funchess, 47, and a 3-year-old boy who told them the child was in the upstairs bedroom. Funchess and the other child had fled the apartment after trying to put out the fire with a fire extinguisher.

The two officers tried to enter the apartment and rescue the child, but were unable to see through the smoke on the second-floor of the six plex apartment building. Firefighters were able to crawl through the smoke and fire and save the girl and get her to an ambulance outside.

Greg Buelow, a spokesman for the Cedar Rapids Fire Department, said that the fire originated on a mattress in the front second-floor bedroom where the child was located. He said that the fire and smoke spread throughout the second-floor, but did not spread into adjoining apartments. Buelow also said that the apartment's fire alarms did not function.

Authorities couldn't speak to the nature of the child's injuries, but said that one of the police officers who had tried to reach her had been taken to the hospital for possible smoke inhalation.