Lodi man, neighbors save elderly woman from fire
Bystanders break window to put out fire, pull 91-year-old woman to safety
Mike Becerra is a local contractor who was leaving a client’s house after a brief visit Monday afternoon when he saw a small amount of smoke coming from a neighbor’s house just before getting into his truck and heading to another home.
“I had a very long day prior to that, and I just wanted to get this done,” Becerra said. “Usually I spend more time with clients and talk with them, but that day I had another client to visit and just wanted to get in and out.”
Becerra said as he opened the door to his truck, he took one last glimpse at the neighborhood when he spotted the smoke at the house across the street.
He said it looked like someone was having a small fire in the kitchen, and didn’t think anything of it until he heard what sounded like a woman having a conversation.
Not knowing if the woman was speaking to him or someone else in the home, Becerra went across the street to investigate.
He approached the security screen on the front door, and saw the woman standing there, who said she was unable to get out because it was locked on both sides.
Becerra then looked into the small window nearby and saw a fire no larger than the size of his hand on the kitchen table, he said.
“It was a basket of something that wasn’t food,” he said. “It wasn’t a big fire, but there was a lot of smoke coming from it. So I looked around to see what I could do, and I saw two girls walking by. I flagged them down, told one of them to call 9-1-1, and told the other to go to my client’s house across the street to get help.”
Neighbors were soon on scene, and they found bricks near the small front window. They were able to break the glass and get a garden hose inside the kitchen to extinguish the fire, but they still could not get the woman out of the house, he said.
Becerra retrieved tools from his truck that he thought might be able
to break the locks or remove the door from the frame, but nothing worked, he said.
Ultimately, he and his client kicked in another window, jumped inside the house and made sure the flames on the table were out.
Still unable to unlock the door from the inside, Becerra and his client escorted the woman through the window they broke.
“By the time we got out, the ambulance and fire department had pulled up,” he said. “She was out of it. She was out of breath, couldn’t talk.”
Lodi Fire Department battalion chief Shane Langone said crews responded to the 700 block of Howard Street between 3 and 4 p.m. that day, and by the time they had arrived, the woman was already in an ambulance and the flames were out.
He said he spoke to the family, who told them they had installed second and third locks on the door because the 91-year-old suffers from dementia and she will walk away from the home at times.
“It was a very small fire on a dinner table,” Langone said. “It appeared she was trying to cook food on the table. The containers were melted, they were plastic, and that presents a lot of smoke.”
Langone said the woman was taken to an area hospital with thermal burns on her throat.
“The fire was out by the time we got there,” he said. “If it hadn’t been for the neighbors, who knows how bad it could have been.”
Becerra said he suffered smoke inhalation during the rescue, and on Wednesday was still experiencing headaches. He said he couldn’t imagine what the woman had suffered, being closer to the smoke and flames for a longer period of time.
The whole incident took about five minutes, and while the neighbors were in a panic, Becerra said he remained calm.
“I was actually planning on being a first responder years ago,” he said. “I took some public safety courses at Delta, but it never really went anywhere after that. (Monday) just felt natural to do it. I hope people are inspired to do something similar when something like this happens. I’m glad I did it.”