Newport Beach : 6-Year-Old Boy Saves Aunt From Flames

When 6-year-old Dirk Van Den Brink saw his great-aunt engulfed in flames in the family’s home on Jan. 30, the quick-thinking first-grader knew exactly what to do.

“My grandma was in the kitchen baking cookies, and my aunt started yelling,” the boy said in an interview. “I went in my bedroom and got my afghan, and then I went into her bedroom and put out the fire,” just the way he had seen it done in a “drop-and-roll” fire safety presentation at Newport Heights Elementary School.

Then he dialed 911 and called for help and shouted for his grandmother, Nancy K. Van Den Brink. Then he turned off the oxygen tank that his aunt, Marie Wiernicz, has used for the last decade to help her breathe.

The fire safety program for the first-graders was underwritten by a local real estate association. The Newport Beach Fire Department begins its fire safety program at the fourth-grade level.

The boy’s grandmother, who is Wiernicz’s sister and a registered nurse, quickly placed cold wet towels on the burned areas of her skin.

“For a 6-year-old to have such presence of mind was remarkable,” Wiernicz said in an interview. “It could have been a lot worse,” she said, noting that despite the boy’s efforts she sustained second- and third-degree burns on her body.

“Fear just didn’t come into his mind,” said Tony Van Den Brink, Dirk’s uncle.

The fire began, Wiernicz said, when a spark from her cigarette ignited her synthetic sweat shirt, which then burst into flames and began to melt.

If he came upon a similar situation in the future, said Dirk, who wants to be a doctor, “I’d do the same thing.”

For his efforts, Dirk will be nominated for a statewide fire award for people under 19, according to Newport Fire Department Battalion Chief August Wagner.