By Maki Becker
Buffalo News (New York)
Copyright 2006 The Buffalo News
All Rights Reserved
BUFFALO, N.Y. - Fierce flames were shooting out the front door and window.
Black, smothering smoke poured from the second floor.
The crew of Engine 26 arrived at the burning Shaffer Village townhouse at 4:06 a.m. Tuesday, three minutes after the blaze had been called in to 911. But the neighbors were already frantic -- and furious.
“Get in there!” they screamed.
The neighbors said as many as five people -- including two babies -- were trapped on the second floor just above the out-of-control fire.
“You’re killing them!” they bellowed as Capt. Stephen Keohane and Firefighters Dan Milovich and Bryan Herring raced toward the fire toting their heavy hose line.
“There was no way we were going to go through that fire until we had knocked it down,” Keohane explained to The Buffalo News on Wednesday, a day after he participated in a harrowing rescue. “Unless you’ve got airport crash gear, you’re not going to run through that.”
The firefighters later learned that the blaze had been reported to 911 as a possible firebombing. The cause was still under investigation Wednesday.
The three firefighters approached the fire as the neighbors continued to holler at them.
“You could feel the rage against us,” Keohane said.
Milovich operated the nozzle. Keohane was right behind him; Herring was a little farther back, keeping the hose from from getting stuck or tangled as they made their way into the inferno.
The moment the flames began to die down, Keohane signaled to his men he was going upstairs -- and to keep spraying.
At the same time, crew members of Ladder 13 -- Firefighters James Gatta, Mark Robinson and David Gardner and Lt. Dan O’Leary -- rushed into the building.
“We all charged up the stairs together,” Keohane said.
The top floor was so thick with smoke the firefighters couldn’t see their hands in front of their faces.
“Zero visibility,” Keohane said. “Even with a flashlight. Zero.”
The firefighters searching the upstairs rooms all knew they were putting their lives in extreme danger.
“The things that can happen: Aside from the sheer heat? The floor can collapse and then there’s the danger of fire spreading to the stairwell. . . . If the fire spreads, you’re walking through fire to get out or you’re jumping out a window,” he said.
The men believed they were looking for five people.
They didn’t know that two of the victims, Ashanti Smith, 12, and Donzhae Smith-Howard, 11, had already jumped from a second-story window to the grass below.
O’Leary headed toward a bedroom on the right; Keohane went left.
Keohane got down on his hands and knees and crawled toward what he believed was a bedroom.
He put his right hand against the wall and used his left hand to feel around as he made his way around the room.
Suddenly, he felt what he knew to be a bed -- a big one, perhaps queen size.
“I put my hand on top,” Keohane said. ". . . There was a little guy. You know when you’re feeling a person. It’s not like a doll. There’s this distinct feeling.”
He scooped the child, 23-month-old Antonio Watts Jr., into his arms.
“I got one!” he yelled. “Take him out!”
Keohane quickly handed the toddler, who wasn’t breathing, to Gatta who was right behind him.
“It was like handing off the ball and having the guy run for a touchdown,” Keohane said.
Keohane turned back to the bed and kept feeling around.
“I got another one!” he yelled as he came across 10-month-old Lanaysia Watts. She, too, was unresponsive and not breathing.
This time, he cradled the child in his arms and brought the baby girl out to the ambulance.
Simultaneously, O’Leary, who hadn’t found anyone in the right-side bedroom, came into the left bedroom to continue sweeping for victims.
On the same bed where the babies were found, O’Leary found their mother, Keisha Croom, 18. She was in severe respiratory distress.
O’Leary whisked the young woman to safety.
The entire rescue operation was over in just five minutes.
Keohane got a call Wednesday morning from Fire Commissioner Michael S. Lombardo.
All of the victims had made it through the night and were showing signs of improvement, he told Keohane.
The babies remained in the pediatric intensive care unit at Women and Children’s Hospital. Their mother was upgraded from critical to serious but stable condition in Millard Fillmore Hospital after undergoing treatment in a hyperbaric chamber.
Ashanti was still in the pediatric ICU, but her sister and her little 4-year-old brother, Ruben, who had escaped with his mother at the start of the fire, were released from the hospital Tuesday night.
“I’m extremely relieved that they’re doing better,” Keohane said.
While he performed several other rescues before, the 19-year veteran explained that none of those victims had survived.
Keohane said he doesn’t deserve any special credit.
“It was just through dumb luck that I went into the bedroom and found the children,” he said.
He said every firefighter who worked the scene -- from his men who quickly extinguished the flames and the firefighter operating the pump to the members of Ladder 13 who helped in the search -- all banded together to make the rescues possible.
“It’s really a group effort,” he said emphatically. ". . . That’s what we do. What can I say?”