Norristown, PA -- A 4-year-old boy was clinging to his life after firefighters rescued him from a burning house early March 7.
Laiauntae Calwell was found by firefighters hiding under a bunk bed in a second-floor bedroom in his family's home on the first block of West Spruce Street, Norristown. He is listed in critical condition at the Temple University Burn Center.
Other family members escaped the blaze wearing only pajamas.
Neighbor Frank Curran, whose home was evacuated due to the possibility of the fire spreading, said he saw firefighters carry the boy from the home.
"I saw the fireman come out," Curran said. "He was carrying the little boy, and it was like there was no life in him at all. They were running down the street." Calwell was flown to the burn center.
Firefighter Billy Epright Jr. located the child using a thermal imaging device and carried him out of the house. He said the fire had completely gutted the front bedroom of the house and was traveling toward the middle bedroom. Smoke was thick all the way to the bottom of the second floor.
"Imagine zero visibility," Norristown Fire Chief Thomas O'Donnell said. "You can't see your hand in front of your face. It's like being in hell. And to be able to find a child in those conditions, it's just heroic."
Two police officers were literally around the corner when dispatchers announced the fire and possible entrapment.
They rushed to the scene. Both men, Officers Eugene Parsley and Michael Bishop, attempted to enter the home. According to police reports, the heat, the smoke and the flames beat them back.
"Without the air-pack on," Epright said, "you couldn't go any further." Fire crews, responded just two minutes later.
"Police gave a valiant effort to get the child out," O'Donnell said. He said flames from the second floor bedroom where shooting across the roof of the porch, nearly hanging over the sidewalk when firefighters arrived.
The cause of the fire has been determined to be faulty wiring in an electric fan inside the front bedroom, according to O'Donnell. The fire was declared under control at 3:15 a.m. The department did not report damage to neighboring structures.
"Firefighters made an aggressive attack," O'Donnell said. "For those guys to go in under those conditions and not have any damage to adjoining properties is just remarkable."
This isn't the first time Epright has entered a burning structure and came out with a person.
Dec. 11, 2002, the last time the Norristown Fire Department rescued someone from a burning home, it was Epright that rescued Valery Guinyard from her Basin Street residence.
Epright said he hates to see anyone get hurt, but as a father, there is more urgency when children are involved in a fire.
"When it's kids, it's a lot tougher," he said. "You really want to get in there, you start thinking about your own, or your nieces and nephews." He shrugged off suggestions he may be a hero.
"I don't consider myself one," Epright said. "I'm doing what I get paid to do. That's my job. It's something I've been doing since '85."
