‘Hero’ Braves Flames, Smoke to Pull Elderly Pair to Safety

One woman banged on the door until her knuckles were swollen with bruises. Two of her neighbors climbed to their rooftops in the darkness to aim garden hoses at the growing flames. At least three others frantically dialed 911.

And Russell Coble, who once aspired to be a firefighter, was hailed as a hero for crashing through wood and glass and braving flames and smoke no less than eight times, as he searched a house lighted only by fire to rescue an elderly couple trapped inside.

In an era when homeowners can live side by side for years without exchanging names, the harrowing, inspiring events that unfolded late Wednesday night on Calle Naranja gave hope to residents here who remember when being neighbors meant more than just sharing a fence.

“My neighbors, I’m so grateful to them,” said Hank Marsh, 78, who wiped tears from his face as he recalled how he and his 75-year-old wife, Jenny, were saved. “Russell, bless him, he’s a hero. He saved me. He saved Jenny, my poor Jenny.”

Jenny Marsh remained in the UCI Medical Center burn ward in Orange on Thursday with smoke-scarred lungs and serious burns across her legs. But she was alive because Coble dragged her out on his last charge into the flames. Hank Marsh, still shaky from the ordeal, left his wife’s bedside just long enough to return home to thank his neighbors.

Two days before his 79th birthday and some 40 years after he built the home on Calle Naranja for his high school sweetheart, Hank Marsh nearly lost everything as he slept on a couch in his living room.

The fire started just before midnight in a back bedroom. Jenny Marsh apparently fell asleep as a cigarette smoldered next to her. A smoke detector in an adjacent room had no batteries.

Next door, Russell Coble, 44, a building inspector for the city of Huntington Beach, was up late working in his garage. His wife, Lori, had just put their twins to bed when she saw an orange light fill the window. As the couple bolted outside, they found neighbor Angie Weintz, screaming and thumping on the Marshes’ garage door, trying to wake them.

Weintz had been driving home when a reddish glow filled her rear-view mirror.

“I hit the brakes because I knew it was a fire,” she recalled.

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Another neighbor grabbed a garden hose and began dousing the back of the house from across a fence, the same tactic used by another pair of neighbors, George and Heather Spraker.

Coble, meanwhile, rammed his way through the front door and began counting.

He knew from a brief stint in the firefighter academy that his legs would buckle if he swallowed too much smoke. The electricity was already out, so he stumbled in the dark, shouting for the Marshes.

He immediately found a dazed Hank Marsh, who handed him a flashlight as the pair lunged back outside. Weintz and Lori Coble had to hold Marsh back when he realized his wife was still inside. Russell Coble had already made his way back in, but was repeatedly driven out by the heat.

Carol Ohshita, a neighbor of the Marshes for 14 years, aimed her car headlights at the front of the house to help the effort. In the distance, they could hear sirens approaching.

Russell Coble, meanwhile, ran around to the back of the house, using the flashlight to shatter every window he passed to vent some of the cloaking smoke. The kitchen window left him with a gash in his wrist, but he said never felt it.

He kicked his way through the back door to the heart of the fire in the rear bedroom, bringing along a garden hose to wet down a path. George Spraker and others used their hoses to help too.

“I went in three more times, searching, but it was just too hot,” he recalled. “I said to myself, ‘This is it. This is the last time I can go in. Things are getting too crazy.’ ”

On the final search, with flames licking at his heels and shoulders, Coble saw two legs jutting past the bed. He dragged Jenny Marsh into the yard. Her pulse was faint and breathing shallow. He called her name and her eyes fluttered open.

Firefighters who arrived within minutes quickly extinguished the flames--and gave Coble credit for saving two lives.

“If it had not been for Russell Coble, we would have almost certainly had two fatalities,” said Dennis Shell, spokesman for the Orange County Fire Authority. “He’s a hero.”

On Thursday, Ohshita also praised Coble and said the same spirit that drove him united all the neighbors.

“We all watch out for each other,” she said. “You have to.”

The hero shook his head and said he did what any neighbor would do if they could.

“I was so relieved,” he said. “I never thought about what I was doing. We all just reacted. There were some neighbors I had never even met, but when the situation arose, everyone pitched in. It’s nice to know.”