NEW BRUNSWICK: The three firefighters clutched each other's jackets as they climbed through the dense smoke and up the steps of the burning Somerset Street home, answering the worst sort of call: Someone -- an 11-year-old boy home alone -- was trapped inside.
After moving slowly through heat hot enough to melt the second-floor smoke detectors, they saved the boy, who suffered smoke inhalation but is faring well, authorities said.
Flames leaped out of the three-story house at 274 Somerset St. when the three members of the search-and-rescue crew Ladder No. 1 -- Capt. Dean Wournell, 38, and firefighters Fred Schatzman and Victor Ortega, both 37 -- along with the driver, firefighter Chris Ferguson, arrived shortly after the 2:06 a.m. call yesterday. Firefighters who arrived within two minutes of that report already were pouring water on the blaze.
The heat from the two-alarm blaze rose as they ascended the stairs. The smoke was so dense they saw nothing.
"You're talking zero visibility," Wournell said.
They creeped into the living room of the second-floor apartment and they heard what they were hoping to hear: the boy's voice, a cough maybe.
Ortega went into a bedroom. When he came out, he encountered the boy who had been awakened in the apartment's other bedroom by the smoke detectors.
"The kid walked right into me. He scared me," Ortega said. Ortega grabbed and lifted the boy, and the three firefighters retreated. Ortega swept the coughing child out of the home by 2:14 a.m.
"When you get down from something like that, it's like, Whoo," Ortega said.
None of the three -- all department veterans -- had ever pulled someone from a burning home before, they said. Wournell, Schatzman and the driver Ferguson had a busy few days. They helped fight the huge apartment complex fire in Edison Friday.
Firefighters brought yesterday's blaze under control in less than 40 minutes, preventing it from spreading to nearby homes.
Medics rushed the boy, Leonen Jaquez, to Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital a few blocks away. He was being kept under observation yesterday. A hospital spokeswoman said the boy's condition could not be released since the boy's parents had not given permission.
But he appeared well when investigators questioned the boy, authorities said.
"The only thing he remembers was the smoke detector and getting out of bed," said William Petry Jr., city fire official. "The (carbon monoxide) probably made him drowsy. He was probably ready to pass out. In a fire, that's what the killer is, smoke not flames."
Petry said an overloaded extension cord running from the basement to the kitchen with several outlets sparked the fire. A moveable dishwasher, a fish tank and other appliances that were too burned to identify were plugged into the cord, he said.
The fire gutted much of the first floor. The second floor sustained heat, smoke and water damage, Petry said.
Natalino Garigali, 26, was sleeping on the third floor with his 5-year-old daughter, Alyah, when the smoke and his father's voice woke him.
"I have my daughter in my arms thinking, 'I have to get out of here, but how,' " said Garigali amid the charred wreckage inside his family's home. "I felt the heat on my legs -- I'm in my boxers -- so I backed up. Then I put my daughter's head against my chest and just went through it all."
Garigali's brother, Antonio, 21, and his father, Giovanino, 68, and mother, Maria, lived on the first floor of the apartment. His father and mother purchased the home 30 years ago, he said.
They all fled the home before firefighters arrived.
The Garigalis' 12-year-old Rottweiler-German shepherd mix named Queen also escaped the blaze. The family also was raising a half-dozen chickens in the basement that also were rescued. The animals were turned over to the family, authorities said.
Natalino Garigali said the chickens provided fresh eggs, a Sicilian tradition.
New Brunswick Police Sgt. Richard Rowe said the boy's mother, Ambrosia Jaquez, 31, left the house at 10:45 p.m. Monday in a taxi to go to Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital after suffering back pain and feeling dizzy. She called her husband, Juan Remejio, 39, Leonen's stepfather, to pick her up between 1 and 2 a.m. yesterday, Rowe said. He left the boy alone, Rowe said. The couple was still at the hospital when the child was brought there, Rowe said.
Rowe said the state Division of Youth and Family Services is investigating the incident along with city police. Rowe said the couple's story has been verified.
"We're looking at it with DYFS to see if their actions warrant a charge," Rowe said. Candie Hayes, spokeswoman for the American Red Cross of Central New Jersey, said the agency was providing lodging and other help to the Remejio-Jaquez family and was still trying to contact the Garigalis.
