Chad Roberts handles the overnight shift for the Democrat and Chronicle in Rochester. He also writes the blog While Rochester Slept. Chad has the story this morning of Firefighter Roberto Cabrera who brought a young woman and her infant son to safety during a raging house fire. A second alarm was sounded due to the heavy fire conditions. Here are excerpts from Chad’s article:
Rochester firefighter Roberto Cabrera balanced himself at the top of a ladder outside a third-floor window of a burning house shortly after midnight, when a 22-year-old woman handed him a 2-month-old boy.
Democract and Chronicle photo by Chad Roberts
“I had to calm her down,” said Cabrera, who has been a firefighter in Rochester for about 10 years. “I said: ‘You are going to make it. Just come out with me. I will help you out. Just take it easy — take some breaths. I know it looks crazy now, but we are going to both make it.'”
After Cabrera coaxed the woman through the window, he started down the ladder with both mother and child, before handing the baby off to a firefighter below him on the ladder.
The woman and infant, whose identities were not released, were taken to Strong Memorial Hospital to be treated for smoke inhalation.
“You’re always thinking about what you are going to do,” Cabrera said about preparing to fight a fire. “What’s it going to be like when you are there? If it is going to be chaos.”
Chaotic is a word Cabrera used to describe this morning’s fire scene. Dozens of people from the neighborhood around the burning house on Glendale Park, near the intersection with Tacoma Street, gathered in the area. Rochester police officers had to stop more than one person from trying to re-enter the burning house, said Deputy Chief Bill Curran of the Rochester Fire Department.
The fire, which Curran described as suspicious in origin, was especially intense, and heavily damaged the large house.
“We think that during the initial attack, that the first floor flashed over,” Curran said. “We had to pull our people out, because the fire was pushing the guys back out of the house. And we had a report of people trapped on the third floor.”
“It was chaotic; there was a lot of fire blowing out,” Cabrera said. “We heard people on the third floor. I looked up and saw somebody. I didn’t know who they were.”
