By Amy Jeter
The Virginian-Pilot
CHESAPEAKE, Va. — A man had already jumped out of a second-story window when Engine 28 arrived at the burning house on Greenwing Drive .
Except for the black smoke billowing through the front door, it didn’t look too bad, Lt. Michael Connolly thought.
Then he heard the cries of people crowded on the snow-patched front lawn: An elderly woman was trapped upstairs.
As members of the first firefighting unit on the scene Friday afternoon, they were also the first into the building.
Firefighter and paramedic Beatrice Luther, firefighter Simuel Frazier and Connolly charged into a wall of heat and black smoke, pulling a hose through the front door and up the stairs.
Adrenaline coursed through their veins. And determination. Maybe a tiny bit of fear.
In more than 22 years, Connolly had participated in only a handful of live rescues. It was Frazier’s first in five years as a firefighter.
They heard the people on the lawn yelling, “Upstairs! Upstairs!”
The stairs curved to the left, then to the right. They saw only inches in front of their masks.
Questions flooded Connolly’s mind: Would they be able to find her? Would she be alive? Where had the blaze started?
It felt like a sauna on fire.
At the top, Frazier turned to the left, and Connolly broke right. They counted four, no five, bedrooms to check.
Frazier opened a door, felt a walker, and knew he had the right one. “Ma’am, are you in here?” he called out. He heard a low moan and glimpsed a slight movement through the smoke.
“I found her!” Frazier cried over the radio. He tried to bust out the window. It wouldn’t break.
The 99-year-old woman crumpled to the floor. They’d have to carry her out the front.
Flames tore up the staircase as they made their way down. Luther batted them back with water from the hose.
They broke free from the building, delivering the woman to the waiting paramedics. An ambulance whisked her away.
With help from Engine 8, the fire was under control by 12:27 p.m. - eight minutes after Engine 28 had arrived.
Along with the woman, Chesapeake firefighters saved an unconscious dog, which had alerted its owners to the smoke. The animal was revived and transported to an emergency veterinarian.
The rescued woman was in critical condition Friday night at Sentara Norfolk General Hospital’s Burn Trauma Unit. The man who’d jumped from the window was still in the hospital Friday night, too, but with injuries that weren’t considered life-threatening, according to fire officials. The house’s two other occupants planned to stay with family members.
Fire marshals ruled that the blaze was accidental, originating near an electrical space heater on the first floor.
The firefighters reflected on the rescue Friday afternoon at Station 8. Their shift continued until 7 a.m. today.
“It put a whole new perspective on everything,” Frazier said. “It’s kind of bittersweet because you saved the person, you got her out of the house, but at the same time, they lost a lot.”
Pilot writer Kathy Adams contributed to this report.
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