Miss. Firefighters Recall Effort to Save Two Girls

Feb. 18--BILOXI -- Black. Pitch black. As dark as the screen of a TV that's turned off.

Firefighters who saved two little girls this week said that's what they faced as they crawled through a smoke-filled back bedroom while other firefighters sprayed water at flames in the front of a small wooden house on Desoto Street.

"Imagine going in blindfolded to somebody's house where you've never been before," Andy Cosper said. "You don't know where anything is. You're on your hands and knees. You can't see and you don't know where your obstacles will be."

Cosper is the firefighter from Engine 1 who pulled the unconscious 3- and 5-year-olds to safety Tuesday. But he is the first to say it was a team effort that saved the girls' lives.

Police said the girls had been left unattended while their mother went shopping. They lived in a four-bedroom house rented out as separate apartments to eight Spanish-speaking people. How the girls wound up unsupervised was the least of firefighters' concerns as they scrambled to find them.

"Our No. 1 job is to save lives," Capt. Steve Dunaway said.

The rescue took about 30 seconds, but the firefighters agreed it seemed much longer.

Had it not been for one of the tenants, firefighters would have found out too late that the little girls were in the back of the house.

Marvin Joel Reyes was one of two tenants who were in their own rooms when they smelled smoke. He called 911 at 12:11 p.m., and cut his legs and hands breaking out a window to escape.

Engine 3, the first unit to arrive, began dousing water at the living room, where the fire began. The men from Engine 1 arrived next, each carrying an extra 75 pounds in gear. Some of them began a crawling search to see if anyone was inside. They saw no one through the thick, black smoke.

It appeared to be a routine fire until Reyes pointed to a back window, screaming "two babies!"

Jose Luis Mendoza, the other tenant at home, climbed out and called his wife at work to ask if she knew whether the children were at home.

The firefighters dousing the flames had radios to communicate with each other. Those trying to rescue the girls did not; they acted on instinct and relied on their training.

While the other fire unit kept hosing the flames, trying to push the heat away from the back of the house, Cosper and Chris Denton broke a window at the girls' bedroom. They discovered the window was blocked by a dresser. They pushed it, shoved it and used a fire tool similar to a crowbar.

Cosper said he jumped through the window, feeling his air pack scraping against the opening, and shoved the dresser down. Denton followed and they were about to begin searching by touch.

Cosper had put both hands on the floor as he jumped in, and realized each hand was touching something small like a pillow.

"It was the two girls," Cosper said.

The first one he picked up was the 5-year-old.

Dunaway was standing outside the window as a wall of black smoke poured out the opening.

"All of a sudden I saw two arms stretched out and holding a child upside-down," Dunaway said. "I didn't know if it was a boy or a girl."

Dunaway handed the child to Chris Thibodeaux and told him to see if the child was alive.

Cosper turned in the darkness to find the 3-year-old. He grabbed her but couldn't see the window through the smoke. He was yelling, "Where is the window?" Dunaway began tapping near the window and yelling back until Cosper's arms emerged with the other child through the broken window.

Dunaway said he cleared the 5-year-old's air passages. He and Joe Bates began performing CPR, but the girl remained unresponsive, so Dunaway began mouth-to-mouth resuscitation.

"After the fifth cycle, she gasped," he said.

Cosper said he believed the 5-year-old would make it after she squeezed his hand.

Gabe Haynes and Thibodeaux began CPR on the 3-year-old. She regained consciousness more quickly, and waved her fingers at her rescuers.

The firefighters' adrenaline was so high that Brian Rouse, working the air unit, replaced air tanks for each at least three times.

The girls were breathing on their own when they were taken by ambulance to a hospital for observation. Finally, the firemen breathed a sigh of relief.

"That's why I became a firefighter," Dunaway said.

Deputy Chief John Jennings called it a good day.

"You train for situations you hope you never have to see," Jennings said.