78-year-old woman rescued by neighbors from second story window in California house fire

By Peyton Headlee

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    EL DORADO HILLS, California (KCRA) — Five people are safe after a Thursday morning house fire in El Dorado Hills. That’s thanks in part to the quick thinking of their neighbors. They jumped in to help a 78-year-old woman who was trapped on the second floor.

“It just got bigger and bigger, and windows were breaking, and the fire was billowing out,” Jennafer Phillips said.

Phillips was inside the house with her boyfriend, Jessie Sanchez. Her mother, father and brother were inside, too.

“I was woken up by my dad telling us that there was a fire inside,” Phillips said. “He informed us that my mom didn’t make it down the stairs.”

Phillips and Sanchez tried to run upstairs to get her, but they said the heat and smoke were too much.

“Jessie tried to go in first with a sweatshirt over his face, but it was just too intense. I tried to also go in with nothing and it’s intense and just slaps you in the face,” Phillips said.

She said that’s when they ran to grab ladders.

“We threw them on the side of the house, and Jessie ran up the garage and went in and got the window open and was yelling for my mom,” Phillips said. “I guess my mom was just kind of like frozen. And he told her, like, ‘We got to get you out.’ But my mom’s got bad hips and knees, so she’s not the one to be crawling out of windows normally.”

“I was able to reach in and find her hand and then pull her to the window and then slowly work the whole body out,” Sanchez said. “And then once we got her out of the window, we kind of collapsed onto the eave and had to take a second. And then the neighbors came.”

El Dorado Hills Fire Captain Adam Tiffany lives next door and Cal Fire firefighter Gary Culmer lives just a few houses down. Both were off duty at the time of the fire.

They jumped into action, helping to bring Phillip’s mother to safety.

“I went to the backyard, grabbed my A-frame ladder, came back around, threw up the ladder, got it pretty close to the house. And then Gary and Jessie and I helped her get down,” Tiffany said. “I would expect almost anybody to do this. If you have a ladder and you can be in a position to help, like, you know, that’s just a friendly neighbor thing to do.”

That friendly neighbor thing, Phillips says, is one of the reasons this fire didn’t turn fatal.

“My mom told him that she thought it’s a wrap. So that’s terrifying to think that my mom was like thinking she’s in her final moments,” Phillips said. “I don’t know how I could have gotten her out if Jessie wasn’t here. I couldn’t have pulled her out.”

Phillips said she is thankful they all made it out safely and relatively unharmed. One person was transported to a local hospital for smoke inhalation.

The fire caused heavy damage to the first and second floors of the house. Officials estimate the damages to be around $450,000 to the property and $100,000 to the contents of the home.

Investigators are still looking into the cause of the fire.

The family has set up a GoFundMe as they attempt to start over.

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