Neighbors Rescue Man From Blaze

A pair of Anaheim residents helped lead an 80-year-old neighbor from a burning house early Tuesday, but the man’s pet dog and cat perished in the blaze.

Robert Beck was injured in the fire on the 200 block of Bel Air Street. Damage was put at $250,000.

The two neighbors said they had smelled smoke throughout the night but could not pinpoint its origin.

Early Tuesday, Ralph Murillo, 25, searched his own house for the source of the smoky smell. From his rear window, he said, he then saw flames curling from Beck’s one-story house.

Along with another neighbor, Frank Hilbert, 25, he ran to the burning house, where he was eventually joined by a dozen other neighbors. Together they pounded on the front door, screamed and even honked car horns.

When there was no answer, they hoisted open a window and Murillo crawled inside the burning house, ran down the hallway and woke up Beck.

“It was all smoky,” said Murillo. “I just kept going door to door, ransacking the house until I found him.”

Beck, who has lived in the house for more than 40 years, was “dazed, confused and surprised” at first, Murillo said.

“Where’s the fire?” Murillo said his neighbor asked as he quickly dragged him by the arm back to the open window.

It took 22 firefighters about 30 minutes to control the blaze, which started in an area Beck had been spray-painting Monday and evidently left behind some cigarette materials, said Maria Sabol, spokeswoman for the Anaheim Fire Department. The pets’ bodies were removed by Orange County Animal Control.

The American Red Cross provided food and shelter for Beck.

Sabol credited Murillo’s quick thinking, saying the neighbor may have saved Beck’s life.

But Murillo said he’s hardly a hero. “I just consider myself a good Samaritan,” he said.