Boy drags pensioner from fire

Press, 27 December 1985, Page 1

Boy drags pensioner from fire

Special correspondent Invercargill A whiff of smoke reached a “Southland Times” paperboy, Brett Cordes, aged 15, as he began delivering papers in Hensley Street, Gladstone, early yesterday. Thinking it was just an ordinary rubbish fire, he Kit until he reached it of a pensioner, Elizabeth Mary Ida Orr, aged about 80, just after 5.30 a.m. He noticed thick smoke

lingering about the house, and after knocking on the front door, which was unlocked, he went in. “I went into her bedroom and saw her lying on the floor by the bed. The bed was on fire but you couldn’t really see the flames," he said. “When I first saw her I thought, ‘This doesn’t look too good.’ But I told her ‘l’m going to get you out,’ and dragged her out and she stood up outside the door.”

Brett Cordes raced over to a neighbour’s house to call the Fire Service. Returning to Mrs Orc’s flat, he found her about to go back in, but managed to stop her. “She seemed pretty dazed," he said. An ambulance took Mrs Orr to Southland Hospital, where she was reported in a satisfactory condition last evening, having suffered from smoke inhalation. Friends who had been visiting her on Christmas

night remembered smelling smoke. According to her friends, an electric blanket sitting on a chair by her bed had caught fire earlier. Mrs Orr had put it out with water. It continued to smoulder all night, working its way down the chair, through the floor and back up under her bed. “The hole in her floor is big enough for a person to get through,” said a neighbour, Mrs Sally Marson. •

“Brett needs /a medal. That kid saved her life.” Brett Cordes was a bad asthmatic as well, which made his going into such heavy smoke doubly dangerous, she said. Although he admitted that he did have difficulty breathing in the smoke-la-den atmosphere, he said he had not had any bad asthma attacks for some years. Firemen commended the boy’s actions, describing him as level-headed.‘ A

station officer in the fire safety division, Mr Jim Prentice, said, his efforts were “tremendous.”-; “He averted something that could have had-possible fatal consequences.” Damage from the flames was contained in the bedroom of Mrs Git’s flat but the flat had 60 to 70 per cent smoke damage. The fire was under control by 6 a.m., but firemen had to use breathing sets because of the smoke.