Oct. 27--It drizzled as firefighters picked through the remnants of Rosa Hernandas' attic Tuesday.
Just an hour earlier, around 10:30 a.m., a fire had engulfed the back of her frame home at 4607 S. California Ave. where her two sons, 19 and 22 years old, were sleeping. Both survived.
Hernandas was a few houses down the street at her mother's home when the blaze began. That's where a neighbor knew to pound on the door, and that's where she took off to save them.
"I ran and went inside," said Hernandas, 51. "I couldn't see nothing. There was a lot of smoke."
Though her 19-year-old managed to get out unharmed, his brother was trapped in the attic. Firefighters used a ladder to rescue him from the home's highest window, which faces the street.
Aldo Martinez was two blocks north when he saw the smoke and called the fire in. He is working to become a firefighter, he said, so he drove toward the blaze. The older brother had shattered the attic window for air and an escape, and Martinez let him know help was coming.
"If it wasn't for him breaking the window and sticking his head out, he would've died," said Martinez, 28. "If it would've been somebody younger, they would've died. There was no way to get out."
The older brother was being treated at Stroger Hospital for smoke inhalation, according to Battalion Chief Mike LoBianco. He said the fire swallowed all three floors in the rear of the house, and the cause was under investigation.
As firefighters sifted through the charred home, the younger son, Danny Hernandas, sat on a neighbor's stoop visibly shaken. His eyes were swollen with tears and his hands trembled, sticking out from the Spider-Man blanket he was wrapped in.
"I was asleep," he said a few times.
On his right foot he wore a single Nike slip-on shoe. His left foot was bare.
As his mom and neighbors tried to comfort him, Hernandas stood up and walked over to Zeus, his big, soaking wet German shepherd who also made it out of the burning home. While petting him, Hernandas worried aloud about the family's two other dogs.
"I left the door open," he said, hoping they ran out.
A firefighter across the street said the dogs had not been found yet.
"Maybe they ran out," he said. "They could still be buried under debris."
