KENSINGTON, Pa. — A firefighter and the woman he saved by sharing his air mask reunited Friday.
Mary Jackson was trapped inside a burning house and choking on smoke when Firefighter Fran Cheney found her, according to WPVI.
“It was just panicky, smoky, she was trying to catch her breath; you could just hear her, she was in distress,” Firefighter Cheney said.
“I couldn’t see, I couldn’t breathe,” Jackson said.
Firefighter Cheney said he gave Jackson his air mask because he did not think she would make it through the smoke.
“I take a quick breath, rip my helmet off, give her the mask, and just say, ‘let’s go,’” he told WPVI.
He said he wasn’t thinking about facing discipline.
“If I was worried about that, I wouldn’t be here and neither would any of these guys I work with,” he said. “That’s what we do, that’s who we are.”
Firefighter Cheney was one of the firefighters injured in April’s warehouse fire that killed two brothers, and he believes that experience influenced this rescue.
“Lt. Neary and Firefighter Sweeney, that was their way of telling me everything was going to be okay,” he told WPVI.