April 29--The last time St. Paul firefighters saw 9-year-old Nevaeh Sellers was the February morning they carried her unconscious from a fire in her Dayton's Bluff home.
On Monday, the little girl walked into Fire Station No. 7 carrying balloons and a sign almost as big as she was. It said, "Thank you firefighters" on one side and "My Hero!" on the other.
As Nevaeh met the fire department personnel who rescued her, Fire Chief Tim Butler honored their work.
"Few things can match the horror of waking up to find yourself surrounded by smoke and flames of a house fire," Butler said. "One breath of toxic fumes can disorient you until you're not able to find yourself out of familiar surroundings, and several breaths can render you unconscious, can stop your heart, your breathing and your life.
"Imagine surviving the dark and frantic escape from a burning home only to realize that one of your defenseless children is still trapped inside and can't get out."
That's what happened Feb. 17 in the 300 block of Maple Street, Butler said. The cause of the fire that started in the basement is undetermined, the fire marshal said.
Nevaeh lives in the rental home with her grandmother and stepgrandfather. It was Presidents Day and there wasn't school; her mother, Trinity Sellers, said she had allowed her daughter to sleep with her in the basement.
"All I could see when I got up was ... a whole cloud of smoke, black smoke," Sellers said Monday. "Everything down there was black."
When Sellers woke up, she thought her daughter was already upstairs. She didn't know until she got upstairs that Nevaeh hadn't made it out. The girl's family tried to go back in the basement for her, but they said the smoke made it impossible to breathe.
Sellers, who was barefoot, started kicking in basement windows from the outside, screaming, "Nevaeh! Nevaeh! Nevaeh!" She said the breaking glass cut her legs and she wound up with frostbite on her feet.
"That's what kind of killed me the most: she was helpless and I couldn't even get to her," Sellers said.
Firefighters from Station No. 7 on Ross Avenue between East Seventh and Earl streets "were met by people yelling that their baby was still in the burning basement of the house," Butler wrote in letters of recognition to Capt. John Galle and firefighters John Wolfsberger and Joel Davies.
The trio went into the basement, advancing through heat and smoke. Davies said he and the others had one mission: "Find this little girl and get her out."
Butler described the scene in a commendation letter, "Davies asked for 'quiet' so the search crew could listen for any noises made by the little girl. That's how Firefighter Wolfsberger was able to locate her so quickly in the heat and smoke; he found her under a layer of charred debris unconscious, but breathing.
"In Wolfsberger's effort to save Nevaeh, he became entangled in some of the building's wiring. Davies freed his fellow firefighter and then took Nevaeh. Other firefighters were waiting to bring the girl outside to fire department paramedics. They treated her and took her to Regions Hospital.
"People want to know what a fire looks like," Davies said. "Close your eyes. It's dark down there ... it's chaotic and it's tense."
Nevaeh, who suffered smoke inhalation and was burned, was in the hospital for nine days. Burns are still visible along the girl's jawline and on her back. The little girl said she doesn't remember anything from the day of the fire.
"There are several critically important elements to a successful fire rescue event in St.
Paul," Butler said, adding that the most important are having operating smoke detectors and a family escape plan.
Nevaeh and her family moved back into the home after the owners fixed it up. Trinity Sellers, who is temporarily living elsewhere with an aunt, said she's still traumatized and wakes up screaming and crying at night. But at the fire station Monday, she and other relatives couldn't be anything except thankful.
"She's my only baby and I'm very blessed that she's here today and I'm very thankful to the people that saved her," Sellers said as she cried.
In addition to the individual recognition letters, Butler gave unit recognition awards that honored others involved in saving Nevaeh -- Capts. Mike Hamburger and Edward Nelson; fire equipment operators Charles Schwartz, Gerone Hamilton and Mike Cox; firefighters Daniel Pierskalla, Trevor Pugh, Wendell Hoagland and Thad Albert; and EMS cadet Lauren Haefemeyer.
Mara H. Gottfried can be reached at 651-228-5262. Follow her at twitter.com/MaraGottfried.
Copyright 2014 - Pioneer Press, St. Paul, Minn.
