Woman Is Saved in Fire That Kills Her Roommate : Rescue: Neighbor who enters burning Anaheim mobile home twice and pulls an unconscious woman to safety is praised as a hero.

A construction worker was praised as a hero Wednesday after he pulled an unconscious woman from a mobile-home fire that killed her roommate.

Fire officials said Jeanne Petrash, 47, probably would have died if not for the actions of 48-year-old Rick Wetmore, who pulled open a sliding screen door in her bedroom and rushed inside twice to drag her through intense heat and thick smoke to safety.

The body of Petrash’s roommate, 54-year-old Harlene Braden, was found by firefighters on the trailer’s living room floor after a 20-minute battle to extinguish the blaze. The fire’s cause was under investigation.

“I figured another 20 seconds and (Petrash) would not be here any more,” said Wetmore from his nearby trailer after the fire. “All you could hear was cracking sounds. The glass blew out like in the movie ‘Backdraft.’ The carport was filled with smoke. You couldn’t see.”

Anaheim Fire Investigator Michael Feeney described the fire as “very fast and very hot.”

“If it had not been for that gentleman (Wetmore), the injured woman would have died as well,” he said.

The fire broke out at 10:20 p.m. Tuesday at the Del Prado Anaheim Mobile Home Park, 1616 S. Euclid St. Petrash suffered smoke inhalation and was taken to Western Medical Center-Anaheim, where she was in stable condition Wednesday in the intensive-care unit.

Fire officials said it appeared Braden panicked and was trapped by the front door’s deadbolt lock, which required a key to open it from the inside. They also said it does not appear that the mobile home was equipped with a smoke alarm.

“Everyone needs to have doors that unlock from the inside and smoke detectors,” Feeney said.

Wetmore’s wife, Barbara, said they were in their mobile home, about 100 feet from the fire, when she heard someone screaming and saw smoke and alerted her husband.

“He just threw on some pants and sandals, grabbed a flashlight and ran over there,” she said. “A neighbor had pulled the sliding glass door open, but she couldn’t get the screen open. Rick just ripped it off. He ran inside and found (Petrash’s) foot, but the smoke was so bad he said he needed help. So the neighbor and I got the flashlight and pointed it through the screen and Rick went back inside. He dragged her over to the door and then he just picked her up and put her on the sidewalk.”

Rick Wetmore said he held his breath inside the pitch-black smoldering mobile home for about a minute as he struggled to pull Petrash out. The thought that he could have been injured never occurred to him, he said.

“I didn’t think about anything. Nothing. It didn’t even dawn on me until I went back to bed about 3 a.m.,” he said.

Rick Wetmore said he went back inside and tried to find Braden, but the smoke and fire drove him back.

“He hasn’t been feeling much like a hero because he wasn’t able to find the other woman,” Barbara Wetmore said. “But I keep telling him that if it wasn’t for him, the woman he saved wouldn’t be alive.”

“I don’t think it’s a big deal myself,” Rick Wetmore said of the rescue. “It’s just something you do. It’s kind of disappointing that you can’t get everyone.”

Times staff writer Eric Young contributed to this report.