By John Christoffersen
The Associated Press via The Boston Globe
BRIDGEPORT, Conn. — Georgette Fogarty-Clemons was heading home from her wedding Sunday evening, looking forward to relaxing with a few friends. Her friend was driving slowly because they had some leftover cake in the car, with hydrangeas and lilies still in water.
That’s when Clemons spotted smoke from the side of her neighbor’s house in Bridgeport and told her friend to back up and stop.
Still in her wedding gown and high heels, Fogarty-Clemons jumped out of the car.
“I stepped right into a pile of mud,” she said. “I just thought to myself, ‘Oh my God, my shoes.’”
“Where are you going?” asked her friend, Hanifah Bost, thinking that the smoke was from a barbecue. Guests following them were equally perplexed.
“That’s fire,” Fogarty-Clemons said. “Come on; we have to tell them.”
Fogarty-Clemons made it to the house and pounded on the door, alerting the residents to the fire. A woman and her 16-year-old son and their pets were able to escape unharmed.
“We have no way of knowing what would have happened had she not come to the door,” said Susan Schneiderman, who owns the house that caught fire.
As firefighters arrived and battled the blaze after members of the family were alerted, Fogarty- Clemons folded her muddied wedding dress nearby.
“She was doing her best to get everybody out,” Bridgeport Deputy Fire Chief Bruce Porzelt said of Fogarty-Clemons. “It’s got to be a funny thing to end up doing that on your wedding day, in your wedding gown.”
Fire officials said the cause is under investigation.
The home’s occupants were not injured, though a firefighter had a wrist injury and a lieutenant’s shoulder was injured, Porzelt said.
Schneiderman said it was “surreal” to have a bride show up in her wedding dress to say her house was on fire. “I wished her mazel tov, remember that,” Schneiderman said. “I thought it was amazing and selfless.”
Her son, Lowell Eitelberg, said Fogarty-Clemons and Bost made sure no one else was at home, then let him use their cellphone. “I think it was a show of real community,” he said.
Fogarty-Clemons said what she did was a natural reaction. “They are my neighbors,” she said. “God forbid if there was a fatality. How could I explain that to my children? I just couldn’t live with myself if I didn’t do anything.”
Bost said that they originally planned to go to the bride’s parents first, but that Fogarty- Clemons decided to head home because she didn’t want to keep her guests waiting. Her husband was at their home.
Fogarty-Clemons, 31, a tax accountant who has two boys ages 7 and 4, said she and her husband did not plan a honeymoon, citing the poor economy.
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