Children Saved From Home Blaze by 7 Heroes : Fire: Young party-goers at a house next door risk their own lives to rescue a family of six trapped inside.

Seven young men were hailed as heroes Saturday after they dashed into a burning house in Hacienda Heights and rescued a family of six from the flames, including a girl with cerebral palsy who was confined to a wheelchair.

Firefighters arrived at the scene to find the men battling the blaze with garden hoses, the mother and children they had rescued wandering dazed in their back yard, and the girl crying in her wheelchair.

The rescuers suffered from smoke inhalation and cuts, and they were taken to nearby hospitals for treatment and then released.

“I have no doubt that the family would have died if they had been in there five or 10 more minutes,” said Los Angeles County Battalion Chief Bill Miles.

The fire, which began shortly before 1 a.m. in the 16000 block of Sigman Avenue, was caused by an electrical short in the bedroom of one of the residents, who had tacked extension cords and wires for several aquariums and clocks to the wall, Miles said.

About 50 young people celebrating a girl’s 18th birthday next door were dancing when Catherine Guillen, the mother of three children caught in the blaze, ran up screaming: “My kids! My kids!” Smoke was billowing out of her house.

Mark Torrez, 19, jumped the 4-foot wall between his house and the one on fire, wet himself down with a garden hose, covered his face with his shirt and ran into the house with the hose. “All I could think of were the kids,” he said.

At the same time, another party-goer, Andrew Gonzales, entered the burning house searching for the children. “You could just hear people choking,” said the 19-year-old supermarket clerk.

Victor Martinez, a 25-year-old mover, broke a window, climbed in and grabbed one girl who, he said, was “running around from one side of the room to the other, screaming.”

Charles Madden, 21, and Richard Scaggs, 20, ran to the back of the house, where they could hear the girl in the wheelchair sobbing: “Mama! Help!”

Scaggs threw a potted plant through the window and climbed inside. Finally, he groped in the smoke until he found the girl and handed her out the window to Madden.

By the time firefighters arrived, the blaze was nearly out. “We got them all out,” Scaggs told Chief Miles, and then collapsed, overcome by smoke.

Firefighters identified two other rescuers as Leo Guillen, 17, a brother of the victims, and Lewis Cebellos, 18, who had also been at the party.

The family is being sheltered by the Red Cross.

On Saturday afternoon, family members returned to the charred house to pick through their possessions. All that was left, Miles said, was a melted second wheelchair the family had just purchased for the 12-year-old. The fire caused $75,000 in damage, officials said.

Neighbors said the Guillen family had lived in the area for about a year. The family’s father is in Mexico City on business, authorities said.

Late Saturday, most of the young men were home sleeping. That was when the fear caught up to them, they said. “Check it out! I’m a hero!” Gonzalez told his mother. But his knees were shaking, he said.