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Andy the "Hero"

8K views 175 replies 16 participants last post by  J. Corwin 
#1 ·
If we can start threads for silly pictures and names of cereal I think we can start one for this.
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Andy's Recount of Last Night's Fire to Come Shortly
by: webmaster


5/1/2004 -- AR.com spoke with Andy shortly after the incident in Rome. As reports have indicated, Andy suffered no injuries, but is slightly shell-shocked by what took place. His recount of the story is mind-boggling, and his actions were truly heroic. Stay tuned as we will be providing much more information, including first-hand description by Andy himself.
 
#27 ·
Well, a mimic rarely gets the same satisfaction. ;)

But, here's an article I think we haven't seen before.

The thing that struck Blanche Roddick, at home in Boca Raton, Fla., was how calm her son sounded. It was early Saturday morning in Rome, and Andy Roddick was standing on the balcony of his burning hotel, speaking into his cellphone and describing in a newsman's measured clip the chaos all around him.

Guests at the Grand Hotel Parco dei Principi were trying to escape the licking flames by jumping onto the wraparound balcony outside Roddick's sixth-floor suite. He heard screaming outside his door.

When Blanche, summoning the most soothing voice she could muster under the circumstances, suggested that Andy - in Rome to play in this week's Italian Open - wet some bathroom towels and stick them under his door, he corrected her.

"Mom," he said, "it's way beyond that."

Roddick, the reigning U.S. Open champion and the No. 2-ranked tennis player in the world, had awakened around 5 a.m. to an acrid smell. He padded to his front door, swung it open and was assaulted by billowy black smoke.

There were people in the hallway, groping for fresh air. Some of them were hysterical. Roddick, 21, pulled close to a dozen people into his spacious upgraded digs - the hotel management had insisted on opening its Royal Suite to him - and herded them onto the balcony.

There they huddled, awaiting help. Soot was falling from the sky. Bodies were landing like birds on Roddick's terrace.

Sjeng Schalken, a 6-foot-4 tennis player from the Netherlands, dropped like an albatross into Roddick's open arms. He had jumped from his room on the seventh floor.

Schalken's wife, Ricky, was another of the half-dozen people Roddick guided to a safe landing. In January at the Australian Open, the first Grand Slam event of the year, Roddick had faced Schalken in the quarterfinals and dispatched him in three breezy sets.

They had been fierce opponents then. But now Roddick and Schalken were comrades, banding together. As the heat grew more intense, the bodies on Roddick's balcony grew more dense. Roddick told his mother there were two dozen of them jumbled together, waiting to be rescued.

At one point, Roddick told his mother, "I have my head about me. It's amazing how calm I am."

Somebody had to be. A few people on the balcony grew more panicky with every passing minute. Roddick had to get in the faces of a couple of people who were easily twice his age and tell them in the nicest way possible to get a grip.

On the floor directly below Roddick, an American from Georgia had tied bedsheets together to make a rope. James Lawery, 58, tried to shimmy to safety from his balcony. He wouldn't make it. He fell to his death.

Bernice and Paul Busque, a Canadian couple in their 60s, were the other casualties of the blaze. They died of asphyxiation.

Roddick was still on the phone with his mother when the emergency vehicles screeched to a halt in front of the building and firefighters spilled out. She had to laugh at what she heard him say next.

"Hey," Roddick cried out. "You guys with the ladder. If you come over here, I'll buy you pizza!"

That's Blanche and Jerry's youngest son. Ever the entertainer, always playing to the crowd.

Before they hung up, Blanche Roddick could hear Andy delivering instructions to the people around him. Her heart swelled with pride when the voice she knows better than her own said, "I'll be the last one down."

And people wonder how Roddick kept his composure when he was down two sets and had a match point against him in his U.S. Open semifinal with David Nalbandian.

In time, Roddick made it to the ground floor of the property. Several people he recognized were already standing outside. The 200 guests who were evacuated included Mike and Bob Bryan, the No. 1-ranked U.S. doubles team. They were barefoot and dazed.

There was Max Mirnyi, a big server from Belarus. He was hard to miss. The 6-foot-5 player, clad only in shorts, was clutching a blanket around his shoulders.

Two young American female tourists were questioned by police over the origin of the blaze, which started in their room, gutting it and another.

The other guests were taken to the Austrian embassy, where they waited in a long snaking line for the privilege of using the restrooms and freshening themselves up. Later in the day, they were allowed back in the hotel to retrieve their belongings.

The rackets of Marat Safin, the 2000 U.S. Open champion, were reduced to piles of ash. Roddick's stuff survived the fire. Nobody had to tell him how fortunate he was.

Last month, Roddick wowed the Delray Beach Tennis Center crowd with his bravura, winning both his singles matches to lead the U.S. to a Davis Cup victory against Sweden.

On Saturday, Roddick's bravery was front and center.
 
#28 ·
Video is up at RO. Andy really does look dazed.
 
#29 ·
oh and I cannot help but :haha: at some of the stuff in that article... "Bodies were landing like birds on Roddick's terrace."

OMFG LOL..... I know it's not funny.... but "dropped like an albatross"!!?!
"Sjeng Schalken, a 6-foot-4 tennis player from the Netherlands, dropped like an albatross into Roddick's open arms. He had jumped from his room on the seventh floor."
 
#31 ·
Thanks for the videos Deb:hug:

and that article star posted is:worship: Now you just gotta love the guy even more :hug: saying he'll be the last one down the ladder, catching all those people and bringing them all on his terase, being the calm, cool, collective guy and making sure everyone was ok
 
#32 ·
You're welcome :) He looks like he needs a hug though :(

and yes, it does make him sound quite special. But consider the writer, Karen Crouse loves Andy lol. It seems a little over-dramatized but still seems like Andy did act courageously and did stay calm and did really help a lot of people out. That definitely deserves a couple of :worship: :worship: I'm still looking forward to reading what he says on AR.com. I wish they would've put it up right away instead of that tease and then nothing all day.
 
#33 ·
Yeah he needed a hug, but he wasn't as bad as I thought he would have been. I just thank God he was calm this morning so he wasn't as affected by it. Can you imagine if he was frantic this morning how shoken up he would have been recounting what went on :scared:
 
#34 ·
lol yeah... but from what we've seen before (like when he served out the USO, etc) the really really big moments seem to make him really calm, like almost able to remove himself from the situation. He even did it a little bit in the SF against David. I guess I'm sort of the same way. One day in high school I came home and my dad had had a seizure from a medication and usually I freak out (as if you guys didn't already know that I freak out easily lol) but then I was very calm, calling 911 then my mom at work and stuff and I didn't even realize how calm I'd been til after. It's very weird. Surreal. You just sort of go through the motions and then later you are thankful that someone taught you all the right things to do.
 
#35 · (Edited)
Thanks for that article, star, that was great, but they made it sound like the WTC Towers were crashing down again ("bodies were landing like birds on Roddick's terrace"...? c'mon! ) :yeah:

And I just saw the video of Andy being interviewed on ESPN News. Nice clip. His voice sounded raspy, maybe from the smoke.

ESPN didn't bother to report on Marat losing all his rackets in the fire. :lol:
 
#36 ·
yea, thanks for the articles and clips

Karen, I think, is in love with Andy :hearts:
 
#37 ·
bunk18bsb said:
oh and I cannot help but :haha: at some of the stuff in that article... "Bodies were landing like birds on Roddick's terrace."

OMFG LOL..... I know it's not funny.... but "dropped like an albatross"!!?!
"Sjeng Schalken, a 6-foot-4 tennis player from the Netherlands, dropped like an albatross into Roddick's open arms. He had jumped from his room on the seventh floor."

You said the same thing I was going to say lol :D
 
#39 ·
Chrisie said:
People are wondering what he will do if Federer was on that balcony.
:lol: Gosh... I see this situation... :haha: Federer as Julia... omg
'dropped like an albatross into Roddick's open arms' :D :lol: :haha:
 
#40 ·
Win a damn match. Nobody will care if he's too depressed to play. :fiery:
 
#41 ·
In the LA Times article it says his rackets melted in the fire... but, we saw him carrying out his stuff? And he was practicing that day? :shrug:
 
#43 ·
well star..... to his MOM! if I were on a balcony of a burning building in a foreign country I'd want my mommy too!
 
#46 ·
Other papers are picking up this story. It must have been put on a news service without a byline. Here is one from News.com.au. I think this is a Murdoch owned concern. It doesn't quite jibe with other reports, but here it is:

AMERICAN Andy Roddick, 21, one of the world's top tennis players, was given new heroic status yesterday when he helped fellow guests survive a fatal fire in a five-star hotel in Rome.

Three died in the fire in the top floors of the Parco dei Principi, close to the Borghese gardens in central Rome in the early hours of Saturday.

Two young American women described as having been "tipsy" were being questioned by police after it was found by firefighters the blaze probably started in a wastepaper basket in their room.

Roddick was high above them in a huge suite with a large balcony. The blaze forced one guest nearby to try to shimmy down the walls on a bedsheet. He slipped and died.

Roddick's US Davis Cup teammate Robby Ginepri told reporters: "We didn't find Andy for a while because he couldn't get out. He was on the sixth floor, so he stayed on the balcony of his room.

"Some people were on the seventh floor, and he helped them come down because the ladder on the firetruck didn't reach that far. His balcony was enormous, so he let people come in there."

Roddick is believed to have helped to usher guests to fire escapes. Marat Safin, the Russian star, was trapped for a time in a corridor with his girlfriend but escaped. The Dutch No.1 Sjeng Schalken climbed down from the sixth to the fifth floor before being plucked off by a fire ladder, which had been too short to reach Roddick's balcony.

No Australian players were involved.
 
#47 ·
Must have been quite a scene

Tennis stars evacuated as fire kills three

May 02 2004 at 10:54AM

By Rachel Sanderson

Rome - A fire swept through a luxury Rome hotel on Saturday, killing a Canadian couple and an American, and forcing US Open champion Andy Roddick and other tennis stars to flee, police and tennis tour officials said.

Roddick helped firefighters evacuate guests from the roof of the Hotel Parco dei Principi ai Parioli, where several US tour groups and tennis players were staying ahead of the Rome Open Tennis Masters next week.

"There was a lot of panic. The fire destroyed the whole of the third floor. The fourth and fifth floors are severely smoke damaged," police official Luigi Rossi said.

'There was a lot of panic'
The Canadian couple, Paul Emile Busque, 64, and his wife Bernice Marie Busque, 61, from Lac Frontiere, died of smoke inhalation after they barricaded themselves in their en-suite bathroom to escape the flames, Rossi said.

James Lowry, 58, from Georgia, plunged to his death from a balcony as he tried to escape using tied-together pillowcases. His wife had made it safely to the ground.

Rossi said the fire had been extinguished and investigators were looking at whether a discarded cigarette or technical fault could be to blame.

Dozens of bedsheets and pillowcases flapped from blackened windows hours after the fire, the ferocity of which blew out windows on the third floor.

"I woke up at about 5 o'clock and smelt smoke and they determined there was a fire and we got out," said a hotel guest, Dudley Moorehead, from the United States.

"A lot of people tried to lower themselves out of windows. We tried to get them to stay inside because the fire department was here but a lot of people couldn't tell," he said.

At least five people suffered from smoke inhalation in the fire that started at around 5am (03h00 GMT) in a room on the third floor and sent some 200 screaming and sobbing guests into the streets below.

Among the evacuated guests were several tennis players in town for the Rome Open Tennis Masters next week, including Roddick, Argentinian Mariano Zabaleta and Chilean Nicolas Massu.

An ATP spokesperson said around 30 players were staying at the five-star hotel. None were hurt in the blaze. The guests have been evacuated to other hotels around the city.

(Additional reporting by Antonio Denti and Max Rossi)
 
#49 ·
Carito_90 said:
yeah deb, but how on earth can you catch someone who's one floor above you while takin on the cell phone?

now THAT's being a hero :eek:
:haha: :haha:

Deb, he's either calm, cool, and collected, or he wants his mommy. I don't see how it can be both. :)

It sounds as if he was reporting everything to her as it happened. And my gosh, what time was it in Boca? Is it a 6 hour difference between Italy and the East Coast?
 
#50 ·
Carito_90 said:
but the fire ladder finally reached Andy's balcony or what?
I got the impression that the fire ladder did not reach the balcony, but one floor down. Sjeng said that his wife, Ricky, went down on the ladder, but that he did not. What I think happened is that conditions improved and the firefighters (plus Andy, of course :)) got the people to the fire exits on the 6th floor where he was staying.

I'm assuming that the floors are numbered European style with what we call the 2nd story called the 1st. Tommy says the fire was on the fourth floor and everyone else says the third floor..... that's why I am assuming.
 
#51 ·
Sure it can. You can have your head about you but still want to be comforted by a familiar voice, just someone to reassure you as you try to do the right thing. I've certainly been in that situation before! Plus it didn't say he was talking the *whole* time, I think Karen exaggerated some of the story, don't you? LOL

If it's a 6 hour difference between Italy and Eastern time, then it was like 11pm-midnight... that's not too bad.
 
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