Dramatic rescue from Roxbury fire

Police, firefighters carry quadriplegic resident to safety

Wanda Ortiz was in the living room of her Roxbury apartment yesterday when light smoke puffed out of an electrical socket. Seconds later, heavy smoke billowed up through the floor, and Ortiz feared her brother was in danger.

"I needed help," she said. Her brother, Eliezer, 29, has been a quadriplegic since he was shot in the neck during an armed robbery in Boston in 2002, and she knew she could not move him. "He was trying to calm me down."

But as smoke steadily filled the Deckard Street apartment, a police officer arrived to help rescue him.

Officer Donald Caisey, one of five police officers who rushed into the building, said Wanda Ortiz directed him to her brother's first-floor bedroom. "She said she wouldn't leave her brother," Caisey recalled.

Eliezer Ortiz said she was afraid that any sudden movement could cause serious injury, a concern that led Caisey to stand by and wait for help from Emergency Medical Services, which was rushing to the scene. Then Fire Lieutenant Robert Santangelo and Firefighter Edward Doherty from Ladder 23 arrived.

"The fire was a lot faster than the ambulance," Caisey said.

So, with the sister hovering nearby, Caisey, Doherty, and Santangelo gently grabbed Eliezer Ortiz and hustled him outside, where they placed him in his wheelchair and had him examined by paramedics. He told them he was fine, they said.

"It was a lot of smoke," said Santangelo. "Black, acrid."

A calmer Wanda Ortiz expressed her thanks in an interview. "They did such a good job," she said of the police and firefighters. "Without them, I don't know what would have happened."

When the fire broke out in the basement shortly before noon, Caisey and the other officers were at school police headquarters at Boston Latin Academy, across the street from the brick apartment building.

Alerted by shouts from neighbors, Caisey stayed with Ortiz while Boston police Sergeant Detective Michael Talbot ran into the basement, where the fire started, to make sure no one else was inside. The residents of the basement apartment had already fled the building.

The other officers - Curtis Mosely, Heather MacKenzie, Caisey, and school police Officer Maurice Osteen - rushed though the three-story building, alerting tenants. All of the officers but Caisey were treated for smoke inhalation at Boston hospitals, officials said. Police Deputy Superintendent William Gross applauded the rescue effort. "They did a great job," he said, adding that despite the smoke, "they stuck with it."

District Nine Fire Chief Paul Miller said the blaze was caused by a faulty electrical outlet in the basement apartment. He said the basement did not have smoke detectors as required by law. Miller estimated the damage at $50,000 and said it was contained to the basement apartment. Residents were being allowed back into their apartments yesterday, Miller said.

Ortiz's mother, Lilliam Sanchez, said she heard about the fire when she received a telephone call from her 30-year-old daughter, who is her brother's primary caretaker.

The fire was the latest ordeal for Sanchez and her family. Another son, Sergio Herrera, 19, was stabbed to death in Fitchburg at a Christmas party.

"We've been through a lot of things," Sanchez said. "I thank God they saved him," she said, referring to Eliezer.