VA Firefighter Pulls Kids from Trailer Fire

VIRGINIA BEACH, VA -- Daniel Williams walked to a nearby 7-Eleven this morning for a cup of coffee, and finally breathed a sign of relief.

Several hours earlier, he had climbed partially into the window of a burning home and saved a 7-year-old girl from a fire in the County View Mobile Home park, on Spartan Drive near the corner of Euclid Road and Holland Drive.

He wasn't able to get into the fire-engulfed structure to save the two other young children while their mother screamed nearby that her babies were inside.

He was happy because he had just gotten a call from the woman saying that her 5-year-old son and 2-year-old daughter were going to live. All three children had been taken to the Children's Hospital for the King's Daughters.

A spokesperson at the hospital said all three children were in critical condition and were being transferred to a hospital outside the area that specializes in burn treatment.

"I got on a trash can and couldn't get in, and grabbed the ladder and got halfway into the window. She was right there," said Williams, burns on his hands and window tar covering his sweatshirt. "She was hesitant at first but I just yanked her out. I couldn't get in for the others, it was just too hot."

Williams said firefighters arrived within a minute and one immediately went in to get the other children.

"He went in the window and handed the boy out then dove out the window with the girl," said Williams, who lives two trailers down. "I've been a nervous wreck waiting to hear how the kids were.

"They hang around with my stepdaaughter all the time."

The Virginia Beach Fire Department received a call at 1:47 a.m. and firefighters were on scene by 1:53, spokesman Art Kohn said.

When they arrived, two adults had already exited the engulfed trailer, Kohn said. The man was helped out by an unidentified man.

"I was told that neighbors had gotten one child, a 7-year-old girl, out of the structure," he said. "By then the trailer was fully involved with lots of smoke, flames and intense heat."

When the first crew arrived and found out there were still two children inside, a firefighter went in through a window and started handing children to a teammate, Kohn said. The first, the 2-year-old, then a 5-year-old boy, who was responsive.

The firefighter is OK, Kohn said, and joined the three children in an ambulance headed for the Children's Hospital of the King's Daughters in Norfolk. The parents were taken to Sentara Norfolk General. Williams said they are OK.

The firefighter who rescued the two children "has been in the department for 5 years, so he's basically fairly new," Kohn said. "He said in that situation you don't think of yourself, you think of the child.

"That guy's a hero."

Miraculously, when firefighters had the structure under control and went in for inspections, they found the family dog alive in a back room. A cat escaped and was staying with Williams, he said.

"They ought to change that dog's name to 'Lucky' " Kohn said. "I have no idea how it survived."

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