Santa Ana firefighters rescue elderly woman from flames | fire, home, firefighters, house, caswell - News - OCRegister.com

Santa Ana firefighters rescue elderly woman from flames | fire, home, firefighters, house, caswell - News - OCRegister.com

The woman had collapsed from the heat of a nearby mobile-home fire.
By DOUG IRVING
The Orange County Register
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SANTA ANA – Firefighters rescued an elderly woman who had collapsed in the heat and smoke of a nearby mobile-home fire on Sunday morning – the start of a busy 26 hours for Santa Ana fire crews.

Hours later, a devotional candle burning in an apartment bedroom touched off a fire that displaced 16 people. And hours after that, another fire caused by a candle swept through a house and sent one man to the hospital with burns.

Fire investigators do not believe the three fires were related, Capt. Chris Caswell said.

The first call came shortly before 2:30 a.m. on Sunday. Firefighters arrived at the Continental mobile-home park in the 200 block of Monaco Drive to find one home already filled with smoke and fire.

One of the firefighters saw that an elderly woman – apparently trying to escape the smoke and heat – had collapsed in the doorway of the mobile home next door. Fire crews knew the woman from previous medical calls, and knew that she used a wheelchair or walker.

The firefighter pulled the woman from the building and put her in a truck. She was taken to the hospital to be checked out; Caswell did not know what her condition was or whether she had been released.

Another firefighter was also treated for heat exhaustion, Caswell said.

That fire caused $200,000 in damage to the mobile home and also burned a 1999 Ford Expedition parked in a nearby car port. Fire investigators believe it started when an electrical plug failed.

The next call took fire crews to a two-story home in the 1400 block of West Civic Center that had been converted to apartments. They found an upstairs bedroom burning when they arrived around 7 p.m. Sunday.

Firefighters knocked down that fire in about eight minutes, Caswell said. But the Red Cross had to find another place for the 16 people who lived in the house to spend the night.

Investigators believe a devotional candle caught a mattress on fire, starting the blaze that caused an estimated $100,000 damage to the house and $50,000 damage to its contents.

The third call came in a few minutes before 4:30 a.m. on Monday, also the apparent result of a candle. Firefighters arrived at a single-story house in the 2300 block of West Anahurst Street to find dark, heavy smoke pouring from a bedroom window.

A man who was sleeping in that bedroom told firefighters he awoke to find that a candle he had left burning near his computer had caught the room on fire. He threw a blanket over the flames, then escaped with five other adults who were in the house.

The man was hospitalized with first- and second-degree burns, Caswell said. He did not know the man's condition.

That fire caused $200,000 in damage to the house and $50,000 damage to its contents, and displaced the six people who were living there.

Contact the writer: 714-704-3777 or dirving@ocregister.com

Ohio House Fire Kills Woman, 3 Children

The Associated Press: Ohio House Fire Kills Woman, 3 Children

TOLEDO, Ohio (AP) — A fire started by a candle swept through a two-story house, killing a woman and three children, fire officials said.

The woman's body was found on the lower level. The children, two girls and a younger boy, were found together in an upstairs hallway, according to fire officials.

"They may have become disoriented and tried to huddle together and tried to get out," said Deputy Fire Chief Luis Santiago.

The fire started around 10 p.m. on Wednesday and was contained within an hour, according to fire officials. Authorities said it appeared there were no smoke detectors in the house.

Neighbor Mike Matzinger, 49, said he was doing dishes when he saw flames shooting out the home's first-floor living room window and ran outside. He tried to break through a steel back door but it was locked and wouldn't budge, so he called to the children, who he thought were upstairs.

Matzinger said he yelled for them to come to the back window so he could catch them, but they never came.

He then ran to the front of the house, where a man who lives there was outside without shoes, screaming, "My kids, my kids, they're in the house." Matzinger told him, "We can't get them out."

The man ran toward the home, where flames and smoke were pouring out the windows, and collapsed as if in shock, Matzinger said. The man was taken away by ambulance, but his condition was not known.

The fire blackened the walls and ceilings of the home, melted its plastic siding and charred its wood frame. It also melted the siding of Matzinger's home a driveway away.

Teens' debut sex interrupted by fire

Teens' debut sex interrupted by fire | NEWS.com.au

A TEENAGE couple having sex for the first time were interrupted when candles set fire to the girl's attic bedroom and forced them to flee naked from her parents' house, German daily Bild reported today.

The girl had wanted to create a romantic atmosphere for the occasion. But when the room suddenly became engulfed with flames, they had to make a hasty escape.

The couple, both 18, were pictured naked in the paper among the burned wreckage of the attic.

A charred teddy had survived but the fire wrecked the entire top floor of the house causing around $168,000 worth of damage.

Now that's hot!!! roflmao

11 Year Old Girl saves family from fire that she played a part in causing

WAVY TV 10 - News, Weather, Traffic, Sports for Hampton Roads, Virginia - North Eastern North Carolina - 11 Year Old Girl saves family from fire that she played a part in causing

11-year-old KeKe Wilson says this to other kids,""Don't, don't mess with fire ever again."
Wilson speaks the truth even when it has cost her so much. Her Suffolk home on Lake Kennedy Drive went up in flames about 4:30 this morning. And the girl admits her actions ignited this accidental fire. Wilson says, "I was like had matches and I had lit the candles. I had two candles. I had lit 'em and that's, that's the cause of the fire."

But her mistake is the kind any grownup could have made and what she did after has more than made up for her slipup. Suffolk firefighters say Wilson told them she did light the candle hanging on a wall that was the source of the flames. Hours later in the motel where she and her grandmother are now living, Wilson further explains she thought she had extinguished the candle flame,"I thought I had blew the candle out I thought I had blewn the candle it, it wasn't, it wasn't out so."

Wilson says she fell asleep and then woke up to a fire burning her bed by her feet, "I just ran, I ran to my grandma's room and I said, I said to my grandmom, I said mom there's a fire, there's a fire, there's a fire in my bed."

Wilson's 60 year old grandmother, Dorothy Mae Cross, says, "So I jumped up ran and looked into her room and saw the fire at the foot of the bed started hollering calling my brother telling him the house is on fire and get up, get up, got to get up and get out."

Now Suffolk firefighters credit the girl for saving herself, her grandmother, and her 30 year old grand-uncle Tyrone Ralph-- who jumped out a window to escape after hearing Wilson's grandmother's warnings.

Suffolk Fire Captain Jim Judkins points out, "This could have been a very tragic story here today."

Cross adds, "I'm very proud of her cause my baby could have been gone. She could have got burned up... I thank God we're here, God woke her up to wake us up."