‘I Had to Get Her Out’

Kicking in a door and crawling blind through smoke, an Anaheim man pulled a disabled woman from a burning house Thursday and saved her life, firefighters said, but not before she suffered severe burns.

Beverly Bryan, 44, was semi-conscious on the dining room floor of the Grayson Avenue house, her cane knocked away from her, when passerby Mike Vega, 32, dragged her 20 feet to safety. Paramedics took her to Martin Luther Hospital in Anaheim with first-degree burns on her face and second-degree burns on her right arm and neck.

“That martial arts I took, I finally got to use it,” Vega said of the dramatic noontime rescue. “It was kind of scary, but I was all just on adrenaline and thinking I had to get her out of there.”

Bryan had been alone in the one-story house in the weekday quiet of the suburban street when the fire broke out in a bedroom, Anaheim Fire Department spokeswoman Tabby Cato said. Neither the smoke filling the sky above the house nor flames shooting out of several windows attracted notice until Vega and a friend, Joe Pesqueira, 37, drove by.

While Pesqueira jumped out of his car and ran down the street knocking on doors, finally finding a phone two blocks away to call the fire department, Vega hurried through a backyard gate and approached the house. Vega said he made an initial foray inside but turned back, dizzy from smoke and unsure whether anyone was inside.

It was then, taking in the fresh air in big gulps, that Vega heard a faint call for help, he said.

On his hands and knees, Vega said, he ventured into the house again, his eyes shut tight against the stinging smoke. On his way in, he knocked out a window to let some of the poisonous haze escape. When he felt a leg he grabbed hold, pulling Bryan back the way he had come. At the door, Pesqueira and an unidentified third man helped take Bryan to safety outside.

“They saved her life, no question about it,” Anaheim Fire Battalion Chief Kent Mastain said. Mastain said firefighters arrived from a nearby station house about two minutes after the alarm sounded--in time to see Vega and the others carrying the woman through the garden gate and to the sidewalk.

“He’s definitely a hero,” Mastain said of Vega.

Kevin Williams, 25, one of four renters who share the house, rushed home from work when a neighbor called him about the fire. He found the blaze long out, half of the house a charred frame and firefighters dousing the building with water. His room on the other end of the house was intact.

“That’s everything I own in the world. I am so grateful, and hopefully [Bryan] is OK too,” Williams said.

Bryan remained in critical condition Thursday night, with burns over 3% of her body, hospital officials said.

Cato, of the fire department, said Vega reacted quickly and expertly in rescuing Bryan. She said she plans to talk to the fire chief about honoring the McDonnell Douglas worker at a City Council meeting.

But Vega’s friends couldn’t wait to congratulate him.

“You did the right thing, dude,” Pesqueira told Vega outside the house. “I’m proud of you, man.”