By Gene Warner
The Buffalo News
TONAWANDA, N.Y. — Two off-duty City of Tonawanda firefighters rushed to the scene of a burning home, where they rescued a father and son — one of them unconscious and the other disoriented — late Sunday night, fire officials reported Monday.
Both victims were pulled out of the burning house and taken to DeGraff Memorial Hospital, North Tonawanda, suffering from smoke inhalation. The father, Harry Grant, 80, of Duffy Drive, was treated and released, while his son Kevin, 55, was listed in stable condition, authorities said.
The father called 911 to report the fire at 10:05 p.m. Sunday. Two City of Tonawanda firefighters, Capt. John Graf and Firefighter Joseph Briggs, live in the area and were the first firefighters to respond.
Upon arrival, they found smoke coming out of the front door of the ranch house at 148 Duffy Drive.
“They found one adult, the older gentleman, on his knees in the living room,” Tonawanda Fire Chief Charles Stuart said Monday. “He was disoriented, from the effects of the smoke.”
Graf and Briggs pulled Harry Grant out of the house and onto the front lawn.
“Then they went back in and found an unconscious man, the son, in a hallway adjacent to the burning bedroom, and they pulled him out, too,” Stuart said.
The chief said that after the blaze was discovered, Kevin Grant somehow was able to get out of his bedroom, where the fire started, and he managed to close the bedroom door, in an attempt to contain the fire to the bedroom.
Fire officials reported that there were no working smoke detectors in the home, and Stuart wanted to emphasize the lessons about what could have happened in this fire.
City of Tonawanda fire officials suspect that careless smoking sparked the fire. The blaze left an estimated $17,000 damage, as firefighters managed to confine most of the fire damage to the bedroom where it broke out.
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