Utility Worker Rescues Woman From Texas Fire

Junior Barrientes fought fires as a volunteer in Andrews and West Odessa, but he never barreled into a building to rescue somebody.

That chance came on Monday, by surprise, when the leader of a City of Odessa utilities crew went to deliver parts to a colleague in south Odessa.

They saw smoke, billowing from a home at 1013 W. Ada St.

An SUV was on fire, and two men were trying to put out the blaze with a garden hose, Barrientes recalled in a Tuesday interview. In his telling, Barrientes noticed a gas tank that could explode and warned the men to clear the area.

“He said, ‘Well, my mom is inside’,” Barrientes said. “I said ‘Where inside? We need to get her out.’ That’s when he told me the door is on fire.”

Barrientes said he tried to kick the door down.

“It didn’t work, so I just went through,” Barrientes said. “I just threw myself through it.”

He found the woman inside, 64-year-old Amparo Salinas, in the southwestern portion of the home, on the opposite side of the structure from the flames. Another man followed Barrientes into the smoky home, and the utility worker would cover them in a blanket to cover them from flames as they escaped.

A day later, Amparo Salinas was in a motel room, waiting to learn the extent of the damage to the home where she has lived for five decades, said her daughter, 35-year-old Lola Garcia. But the daughter said Salinas was thankful for her rescuer, as were her family members.

“If it wasn’t for him, my mom might not have made it out,” Garcia said, adding that her mother, who is disabled, had been hospitalized not long before the fire for a breathing problem.

Garcia said her mother lived in the home with her husband, Pedro Gardea, who was at work during the blaze. Her son, 32-year-old Jesus Santiesteban lived at the home too and was one of the two men fighting the vehicle fire with the hose, Garcia said.

Salinas is recovering well from smoke inhalation after being released from Medical Center Hospital, where she had been taken by ambulance after the blaze, Garcia said.

Barrientes said he suffered “light burns” to his neck area and the right side of his body, and he was also taken by ambulance to the hospital for an evaluation. On Tuesday, he said he was reluctant to accept being called a hero, despite praise from his wife and their six children.

“I don’t feel like one,” Barrientes said. “I did it for almost like seven years. But really this is my first time going into a burning home to save a life. Before it was just going in to put out a fire. My firefighter experience was never really getting someone out of a burning house. I finally got that experience.”

His wife, Erika Barrientes, said she got the call from a fireman while she was picking up her 12-year-old daughter from school informing her that her husband was being taken to the hospital. She said she wondered if it was a prank at first, or her husband, known to be clumsy and silly, wound up hurting himself.

Instead, she said she heard news that would make her and the kids proud.

“There are not many people that would have done that, risked their own life,” Erika Barrientes said. “He didn’t know what was behind that door, and he took a risk that not many of us would have taken.”

Contact Corey Paul on Twitter @OAcrude on Facebook at OA Corey Paul or call 432-333-7768.

———

Visit the Odessa American (Odessa, Texas) at www.oaoa.com

Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.