The Region : Mother Uses Wheelbarrow to Save Son

A woman pushed her critically burned 8-year-old son half a mile up a steep dirt road in a wheelbarrow to find help, San Bernardino County authorities said. The boy, Jedidiah John Franklin, was in critical but stable condition at San Bernardino County Medical Center. His mother, Belinda, 39, pulled him from a fire that erupted while he was pouring gasoline into the tank of a running generator at their isolated home near Oak Glen, said Capt. Bill Bryant of the state Forestry Department firefighting unit. The home, in rugged foothills on the edge of the San Bernardino National Forest, has no electricity or telephone, and Mrs. Franklin’s husband, Jeff, was away at work with the family car, Bryant said. “She took off his burnt clothes and wrapped him up in pillows and a blanket and took off” for a state work camp, Bryant said. “It’s about half a mile uphill up a dirt road.” Paramedics said the boy suffered second- and third-degree burns on his face, arms and legs.