Fire/Rescue News - Atlantic City firefighters thrilled to see boys again

The first time Atlantic City firefighters ran into Edwin and Adalid Barahona, it was the middle of a pitch-black night. But the real darkness was in the smoke that came pouring out the window of the burning room where the brothers, ages 9 and 8, were trapped.

Firefighter Jeff Bird, who shattered the glass that released that blast of smoke, said it was so dark that he couldn't even see the two boys as he was going in the window to pull them out. He really never saw them that night, he said Friday - shortly after he met them in the bright light of morning and saw the brothers talking, smiling and looking like nothing bad ever happened to them.

Just a week or so after Adalid, the younger boy, got out of critical condition with smoke inhalation, the brothers met more than a dozen Atlantic City Fire Department members involved with rescuing them from their South Carolina Avenue apartment Oct. 24. The firemen got their first good look at the boys Friday in the parking lot of the Travelodge in the West Atlantic City section of Egg Harbor Township, where the boys' family has been staying since Edwin and Adalid got out of Children's Hospital of Philadelphia.

The ACFD members brought gifts for the family, including a $1,000 check from the firefighters' union, Local 198, $500 from their Firefighters Assisting Victims fund and $1,600 in cash and gift cards that Jeff Bird's wife, Kristy, collected in private donations to help the family. The boys also got ACFD T-shirts and toy firefighter helmets they kept on for most of the visit.

The boys' mother, Mayra Sepulveda, couldn't help crying as she thanked the firefighters - in Spanish, through a translator who is also a firefighter, Stephen Robles - for saving her sons.

She also thanked everyone for the presents, but the firefighters said later that seeing two healthy looking kids was a gift for them, too.

"They were completely unconscious" after the rescue, said Pat Lynn, another firefighter in on the rescue. He actually saw the boys as he helped take them from Bird and get them away from the smoking apartment, and he heard them, too. But what he saw and heard wasn't real encouraging.

"The older one was taking these short, shallow breaths," Lynn remembered, so the rescue workers got him right on oxygen. "I remember looking in his nose, and there was just thick soot caked in there."

With TV cameras rolling during their meeting with firefighters, the boys seemed more comfortable smiling than doing a lot of talking. Edwin, a fourth-grader at Atlantic City's Uptown School, appeared to be trying sometimes to hide behind a stuffed Mickey Mouse that he and his brother both had sticking out of the tops of their sweatshirts.

But some of the firefighters admitted they could relate to that shyness.

"I'm not good in front of the camera," Bird said, after he stepped away from the crowd around Adalid and Edwin. Then again, he added, "I'm not real good without the camera either."

He said other firefighters were in on the rescue, singling out ACFD Capt. Shannon Stinsman and Firefighter Greg Rando. Bird also thanks at least one city police officer for being part of a team effort in saving the two lives.

ACFD Capt. Craig Johnson was part of the crew actually fighting the fire that night, but as he ran to change his air bottle, he had enough light to catch a good look at one of the boys.

"I saw the smaller one on a stretcher," unconscious, Johnson said. "In 22 years on the job, I'd never seen that. ... I've never been in a fire where we had to pull kids out."

And once he did, he couldn't help seeing his two boys - now ages 16 and 13 - in the same situation.

"It just hit me," Johnson said. "I thought about my own kids - anything can happen."

So at roll call on every shift after the fire, firefighters would ask about the boys. And when they finally got their questions answered in that bright morning light, Johnson was thrilled.

"Oh, that does me well," he announced to everyone, after the boys shook hands with all the firefighters.

And this first happy meeting won't be the last. Before they got called away to another alarm Friday morning, Johnson was part of a group of firefighters who invited Adalid and Edwin and their mom to their firehouse for dinner this Sunday.

Contact Martin DeAngelis: 609-272-7237

MDeangelis@pressofac.com