Firefighters save mom, son, 6, in Long Beach blaze

Long Beach firefighter Anthony Fallon can thank his training for helping him make not one rescue early Monday, but two.

Fallon was carrying a 6-year-old boy out of a second-floor apartment through flames and thick smoke about 3:30 a.m. when he was struck by the circumstances: A parent wouldn't have left the boy alone.

"As I was carrying the child downstairs, I realized that there had to be another victim . . . because there was no way that any parent would leave a child in a burning house," said Fallon, the first firefighter to enter the second-floor apartment, where the child was asleep in his bedroom.

Fallon re-entered the house with first assistant Chief Antonio Cuevas and again climbed the stairs to the second floor, then crawled past the burning living room as other firefighters used a hose to douse the flames. They found the child's mother face down on the floor in her bedroom, unconscious.

"Everything in his mom's room melted," said Long Beach fire Chief Scott Kemins. "The kid was really lucky. He was protected" because the door to his bedroom was closed.

The woman, Glenna King, 41, was rescued by Fallon and Fire Capt. Hadrick Ray. King, who had been living in the apartment for seven years, was admitted to Nassau University Medical Center's intensive care unit in East Meadow, where she was recovering from smoke inhalation and in critical but stable condition, a hospital spokeswoman said.

Her son, Maxwell, was unharmed, said his aunt, Beth Nalewajko. "It's a miracle that my nephew doesn't have a scratch on him," said Nalewajko, 43, of East Meadow. Her sister is able to speak, she said, "but she's in a lot of pain."

King and her son were asleep in separate bedrooms in their second-floor apartment on East Olive Street when a power strip in the living room caught fire, according to the Nassau fire marshal's office, which deemed the fire accidental.

King was awakened by the fire and called 911 at 3:18 a.m., authorities said, but collapsed before she could reach Maxwell's room.

Maxwell, who relatives said is autistic and does not speak, was treated and released from Long Beach Medical Center, officials said. He was released into the custody of his father.

Robyn Bentvena, the owner of the home, and her daughter Alexandra, 18, had been asleep on the first floor.

"I had policemen knocking at my bedroom door at 3:30 in the morning saying, 'Get out, there's a fire!' " Bentvena said outside her house Monday. She and her daughter escaped uninjured. "I'm happy that nothing happened to [Glenna] and her son."

The blaze was under control within 20 minutes, Kemins said. About 50 firefighters in 10 fire trucks from area companies responded to the house, which is between Monroe and Lincoln boulevards.

"The neighbors were surrounding us, calling us heroes, but we don't look at ourselves as heroes," Cuevas said. "We look at it as just doing our job and doing what any normal human being would do for another."