Neighbors Save 4 Trapped in House Fire : Blaze: Bystanders, alerted by children’s screams, pry off security bars over windows at a Compton home.

All Oliver Scroggins could recall seeing as he approached the burning house in his Compton neighborhood was “black smoke and the hands of those little children, reaching out for help.”

Scroggins and several of his neighbors used a discarded plank to pry security bars off the windows of the burning house Wednesday afternoon and rescued at least four people trapped inside. Four others apparently escaped on their own, said authorities, who on Thursday credited the neighbors with helping sheriff’s deputies avert disaster.

“The heat was so intense that each of us could work at it for only a moment,” said Scroggins, 29, one of the neighbors who responded to the fire in the single-family home at 14822 Cookacre Ave. “But it was one of those things we had to do.”

Officials said everyone who was in the house was taken to a hospital for observation. None was admitted. The fire, which officials say may have been started by Christmas tree lights, caused $150,000 damage to the home.

Scroggins said he and another neighbor, Basel Jackson, 33, were across the street from the single-story, wood-frame house when their conversation was interrupted by screams.

“It was the children,” Scroggins said. “They were shouting, ‘Help us! Help us! Please help us!’ ”

Heavy security bars--fastened to the outside of the building with eight-inch screws--blocked escape from the windows at the rear of the house.

“We ran over there, and smoke and flames were just shooting out of everywhere,” Scroggins said. “Four of them made it out the front, but then the flames blocked that, and the rest of them were caught in the back.

“We found an old 2-by-4 lying in the back yard and we used that to pry off the bars. We started pulling out kids, and then the officers (sheriff’s deputies) got there, and they started pulling them out too.”

The Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department identified the officers who participated in the rescue as deputies Manci Medina, Christopher Hicks, Matthew Dunn and Charles Barton. Spokesmen said Medina and Hicks had to enter the burning home to save a 12-year-old girl overcome by smoke.

The victims were unidentified, except for Sandra Washington, an adult who police believe was the owner of the home.