BAKERSFIELD, Calif. (KGET) – As if the house fire itself wasn’t bad enough, a heroic bystander had to deal with a protective lapdog around mid-day Sunday in south Bakersfield.
When Leonard Marella saw two bursts of black smoke shoot over nearby rooftops at about noon, he hopped on his motorcycle and rode toward the gathering cloud. His concerns were well founded.
A house in the 700 block of South Olive Street, just north of Belle Terrace, was on fire. And cries for help were coming from the house next door. Its roof was also ablaze. People were trapped.
“Two ladies yelling, help, help,” Marella said. “They couldn’t get out of there, they were handicapped. They were old ladies in wheelchairs.”
Marella broke out a window but couldn’t get through. So he wiggled through a doggie door, and there he found an older, wheelchair bound woman and her adult daughter. They couldn’t get out.
With some effort he got them both out of the house. But then there were their dogs – three or four of them. He went back inside to get them. What did he get for his trouble?
“The fourth one, when I grabbed it, I’m fighting it, I’m crawling on the ground, it started biting me,”Marella said. “Yeah, he started biting me, I grabbed it. He kept biting me and then I finally got him, wrapped him up, and took him out.”
Another neighbor, who did not identify himself, also pitched in to fight the blaze.
“I saw the bigger smoke, so I said maybe something caught fire,” said the man, who used a garden hose to douse a fence.
The rescued women, reached at a nearby hotel on Monday, declined comment. They said they hadn’t slept all night – but they were grateful to their neighbors.
Bakersfield Fire Department crews helped two additional residents escape from the fire, which was brought under control in about 15 minutes. No injuries, to civilians or firefighters, were reported. Arson investigators are looking into the cause of the fire.
Cleanup crews were on hand Monday morning but the homeowners were not.
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