Marasia Vanness said she woke up from her nap when the couch caught on fire.
Vanness and her children were dozing in their Benson Street home Wednesday at about 10 a.m. when the tragic fire that claimed the life of her 3-year-old daughter broke out.
Before she fell asleep, she lit the burners on the gas stove to take the autumn chill out of the house because the heat was not on.
As she slept, her daughter, Amari, stuck a stick of incense in the burner, she said. The girl then put it near the couch which began smoldering.
Vanness leapt up and tried to drag the burning couch out the front door, but the flames spread too fast. She stopped and grabbed three of her children and hustled them out the back of the house, screaming so that someone would call the fire department.
Thick smoke filled the whole house, but she couldn't find Amari, who died from her injuries on Thursday.
Amari was hiding because she didn't want to get in trouble for playing with incense, Vanness said. She frantically searched everywhere, unable to breathe, fighting against the smoke and the heat until the firefighters arrived and pulled her back.
Firefighters saw the smoke from their station at the corner of Western and Washington avenues. As Engine 1 approached the burning home a few blocks away, neighbors screamed through the firefighters' open windows, "There's a baby inside."
Fire and smoke poured out the front of the two-story apartment house. With air tanks on their backs, Firefighters Lt. Pete Hall, Lt. E.J. Seney and Ryan French ran to the rear and entered the apartment to search for the child. The black smoke was so thick they couldn't see 12 inches ahead.
"Flashlights were useless," said Seney, a 22-year veteran firefighter and paramedic with a shaved head. The blazing fire in the front of the house sounded like a locomotive parked in the living room, he said.
The men searched on their hands and knees, yelling to keep track of one another. At times they bumped into each other.
With each passing minute, the unchecked fire multiplied threefold, sending more smoke and heat to the back rooms they searched.
Outside, firefighters raced to run lines to hydrants and get water to the fire. Firefighter Michael Prest was ready to pull the lever on Engine 1 to start the water flowing when the electric lines to the house snapped from the heat and flames. The power lines dropped on top of the engine, potentially turning the metal truck into an electrical conduit.
Prest worried about the firefighters going inside without a line of water on them. He knew he might be electrocuted if he pulled the lever. He pulled it anyway. "I had to do something," he said.
Police Officer Michael Romano, a short husky man who is also a volunteer firefighter, corralled the grandmother, who was frantically repeating "My baby's in there." Romano asked what room the girl was in and the grandmother led him down the alley between the two apartment houses and tapped on a window. It was small and high off the ground.
Romano stood on a garbage can and broke through the window. All he could see was smoke from floor to ceiling. He grabbed a flashlight, but it didn't help. Romano heard the firefighters' breathing apparatus and shouted to them.
Inside, rookie firefighter Ryan French had heard glass shatter as the policeman broke the window. French, 27, joined the department just over a year ago, and this was his first search for a victim trapped in a fire. French barely saw the outside light of the window through the smoke. He crawled toward Romano's voice and continued searching. Seney and Hall followed him.
"It was like someone put a blindfold over your face," French said.
French ran his hands over a bed and found the lump that was the 3-year old girl. He grabbed Amari and pushed her out the window.
"Two hands with a lifeless baby came out of the smoke, as if out of nowhere," Romano said. The policeman took the girl.
A wave of flames passed over the firefighters in the hallway. Known as a rollover, the phenomenon is caused when superheated gases ignite along the ceiling. It's often a precursor to a flashover -- an extremely dangerous point where the heat is so intense objects spontaneously erupt in flames. The firefighters were at the edge.
Seney took his bearings in the blackness and led the firefighters toward the back door. French trailed him and Hall followed using a thermal camera. They exited the house safely and began treating the girl. On the grass outside the home, Prest began mouth-to-mouth ventilation on the child "without any protection," Romano said. "Nobody does that anymore." Romano did chest compressions.
The firefighters credited their training and teamwork including the dispatchers, police and fellow firefighters.
They were saddened to learn Thursday evening that Amari died, said Fire Chief Robert Forezzi. She had suffered smoke inhalation and burns on 70 percent of her body from the heat of the fire. She died at a Boston hospital.
Forezzi wouldn't comment on Vanness' version of events, and said officials are still investigation the cause.
In his 22 years, Seney said he had never stayed so long in such a hot, unchecked fire.
"The risk was high," he said. "But the reward was that much higher."
Copyright 2012 - Times Union, Albany, N.Y.
McClatchy-Tribune News Service
