Jul. 19—Reading firefighters rescued a woman Tuesday from the third floor of a smoke-filled row house in the 400 block of North 11th Street after three other family members climbed out a second-floor window onto the porch roof.
The 25-year-old woman called 911 after fire alarms woke up the family shortly before 11 a.m. She was taken by ambulance to Reading Hospital for treatment of smoke inhalation, said her mother, Dahiana Perez.
Perez said she went to sleep after returning to sell bananas to a nearby convenience store. About two hours later, she was awakened by the alarms and woke up her two youngest children, a 10-year-old daughter and 7-year-old son.
Her oldest daughter, Shalin Quezada, was yelling to her that smoke was coming into her room. She was unable escape out the back because of heat from the fire, Perez said.
Meanwhile, Perez removed the air conditioner from one of the second-floor windows and she and the two children climbed onto the porch roof. A communications worker for Xfinity happened to be in the block and brought a ladder from his work van.
A neighbor climbed the ladder and helped Perez and the two children down. Neither the mother nor the children were injured.
"The trauma was horrible," Perez said about an hour later while sitting on her next-door neighbor's porch as investigators probed the cause of the fire. "I really thought I was going to die."
Once she and her two youngest children were on the porch roof, she felt better about their well-being, in part because her neighbors were reassuring her from below that help was on the way.
She was more worried about her 25-year-old trapped in her attic room.
Fire crews arrived as or just after the children made it down the ladder. Firefighters used a ladder truck to reach the third-floor window, which they smashed and helped the young woman to safety.
Lt. Trent Zulick of the city fire marshal's office said crews contained the fire to the kitchen, but there was smoke damage throughout the rental home. A restoration crew was standing by waiting for fire officials to clear the building. It was unclear when the family would be able to return.
The cause of the fire was still under investigation, but Zulick confirmed it started in the kitchen.
A damage estimate was unavailable.
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