When a fire broke out in the middle of the night, trapping his sleeping family upstairs, a Santa Ana man’s quick thinking and courage saved five people as flames engulfed their South Linda Way home on Friday, Dec. 5.
All five residents of the home were asleep upstairs around 1:30 a.m. In one room, a woman awoke and smelled smoke and woke up her husband, Captain Sean Doran of the Orange County Fire Authority said. The husband, 67, opened the bedroom door but quickly shut it after feeling intense heat. He was able to get out of the bedroom through a window and onto a patio cover, said Doran, who was at the scene.
The man, whose name was not immediately available, jumped off the cover onto the grass below, down nine feet, to get a ladder so his wife could climb down to safety.
Without missing a beat, he grabbed more ladders and ran to bring one to his 11-year-old son’s window.
“Open the window, son! Jump!” he called out in Spanish, heard on a recording shared by the fire department.
In total, the man scaled the ladders three different times, pounding on the windows to wake each person in the house up. His 11-year-old son, adult son and an elderly woman were all able to get down to safety.
When firefighters made entry to the home, the family’s pet chihuahua, Lyka, also escaped. Firefighters put the fire out and transported one adult to a hospital. The home was damaged, with debris outside and smoke visible on the outside.
“This is the definition of hero, courageous, with what he did. It was just amazing, thinking quickly, acting decisively,” Doran said. “It is a rare and just beautiful example of somebody in the community, taking action with courage. We were all amazed by this story.”
In addition to the man’s quick thinking, sleeping with all of their doors closed also helped the family’s survival. The Orange County Fire Authority encourages people to sleep with their doors closed, as it allows more time to escape from a fire and slows a fire’s spread.
“It buys time for people to come around and rescue, that really bought them the precious moments they needed… and resulted in 5 people surviving this devastating house fire,” Doran said.
The cause of the fire remains under investigation.