By Paul Nelson
The Times-Union
SCHENECTADY, N.Y. — A 4-year-old girl playing with a lighter in a second-floor apartment sparked a fire that extensively damaged a home, displacing the girl and 13 others, Assistant Schenectady Fire Chief Michael Della Rocco said.
Six people from the top floor of the three-story house Monday were rescued by ladder from 859 Strong St., according to Schenectady Fire Chief Robert Farstad.
He said one of them, and six firefighters, suffered minor injuries following the blaze, which erupted at 9:45 a.m. All are expected to be OK, Farstad said.
Morreshea Bell was among those rescued, Della Rocco said. Bell, 35, was asleep on the third floor with her two young daughters when a knock on the door awakened her. She ignored it.
Moments later, she got up to use the bathroom and saw smoke seep through the floors and was able to connect the knock to the smoke.
“I saw smoke coming up from the floor and knew that wasn’t a friendly knock,” she said. By then smoke detectors were sounding.
Bell got the girls, ages 8 and 5, to join her mother and sisters in an enclosed front porch, where with the help of firefighters Stephen Helstowski and Mike Daviero and Capt. Donald Macherone they descended a ladder to the street.
Bell and her sister Londa Bell said flames prevented the family from escaping through the front or back door.
Farstad said after setting a mattress or some sort of bedding ablaze, the 4-year-old girl told her 10-year-old sister, who then called 911 and alerted others in the home to the fire. The older girl is believed to have knocked on the Bells’ apartment.
The 4-year-old will get help from the department’s certified juvenile fire prevention specialists, fire officials said. They had not been left alone, fire officials noted.
Londa Bell, along with their other sister and mother, had just last week moved here from Charleston, S.C. Morreshea Bell said her daughters are staying with a nearby baby sitter.
The firefight was complicated by a broken hydrant, which forced firefighters to pump water from a truck.
The two families on the other floors escaped injury. The American Red Cross of Northeastern New York is aiding the 14 people, including a 6-month-old baby and eight other children along with adults from the three families.
Morreshea Bell said her faith in God kept her calm.
“All the stuff that burned is material,” she said, adding “you can’t take that with you anyway. God got me.”
Copyright 2010 The Hearst Corporation
All Rights Reserved