A three-year-old Massachusetts girl was rescued from the top floor of a burning building by a firefighter being praised by witnesses as a “hero.”
The Wednesday morning Everett apartment fire was first noticed by two public works employees who were driving down the street when they spotted the smoke, Boston 25 News reported.
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Jason Papa and Jesse Whinocour quickly ran into the building on the coroner of Hancock and Tappan streets around 8:00 a.m. to warn the residents inside.
“We were driving down the street and we saw the smoke. I told him to stop the truck. We ran in and started kicking doors and knocking on doors. We ran inside the apartments to make sure nobody was in there,” Whinocour told the local station.
The two men estimated that approximately 20 people were inside the building when they began clearing it.
However, the pair could not reach a unit on the third floor of the building.
“There was too much flames, too black from the smoke. I couldn’t save her,” Whinocour said.
First responders from the Malden, Chelsea, and Everett fire departments arrived at the scene.
Papa told the outlet that one firefighter braved the hot flames and entered the fiery apartment to see if anyone was inside.
“He ran in after we came out. We said, ‘There might be somebody up there. We can’t see anymore,’” he recounted. “We guided him up, he went up, came out a couple minutes later, and she was lifeless. He ran down the street with her.”
Everett Deputy Fire Chief Joseph Hickey said both the girl and the firefighter were treated at the hospital with non-life-threatening injuries.
While the cause of the fire is still under investigation, Hickey said he believed that it originated on the third floor of the building.
“He went up there and saved her,” Whinocour said. “He’s a hero…Thank God for that firefighter. She’s alive because of him.”
It is unclear how or why the little girl had been left alone in the upstairs apartment, a WCVB reporter noted.
