Long Beach firefighters honored as heroes

Anthony Fallon can't remember a time when he didn't want to be a firefighter.

On July 26, 2010, Fallon, who has been with the Long Beach Fire Department since 1991, found himself fighting a fire at a second-floor apartment at 3 a.m.

Fallon, along with partners Hadrick Ray and Antonio Cuevas, had to knock down a door in order to save occupants Glenna King and her son, Maxwell, now 8.

For their bravery, Fallon, Ray and Cuevas were honored as heroes Friday at the first Emergency Services Summit at Bethpage State Park's Carlyle on the Green.

The daylong conference served to honor emergency doctors, police, firefighters, EMTs and paramedics for their work and included a panel of speakers from various areas of emergency expertise.

Fallon and his partners were the first to arrive at the June fire, which started in a kitchen.

King, 42, called 911 when she awoke, smelled smoke and saw an orange glow in her doorway.

The dispatcher on the other end was still getting her address when the fumes overcame her and she passed out on her bedroom floor, King said.

"I remember thinking, 'Oh my God, they're never going to get here in time, I'm dead,' " she recalled thinking as she was falling to the floor. The next thing she remembers is waking up in the hospital.

When Fallon got upstairs and came upon Maxwell's locked door, he broke it down. Maxwell was sleeping peacefully. As he was heading downstairs, "I realized no parents would leave a 7-year-old in the house, so there had to be another victim," he said Friday.

On their way back up, they found King, unconscious and not breathing, on her bedroom floor and managed to carry her to safety, though the fire was spreading.

After the fire, King was hospitalized for 18 days with smoke inhalation. She developed asthma and scarring in her lungs, but her son emerged physically unscathed.

When she was released from the hospital, King set up a meeting at the firehouse with the three men who had saved her. Fallon and King both said it was an emotional experience -- they sat down and each told their story of what happened that night. Since then, she's kept in touch with them regularly.

Of all the patients and victims he's interacted with over the years, King and her son are the only people Fallon has ever maintained a relationship with, he said. "I don't know how to put it into words," Fallon said.

"I'll never forget what they did for me -- I don't think I could ever do enough," she said, though she added the three men always insist they're not heroes and were just doing their jobs.

Maxwell, who is autistic and doesn't speak, ignores most people and avoids eye contact with them, his mother said. But when he saw Fallon for the first time after the fire, he went straight to him and began touching his face.

"When Maxwell saw Anthony, it was like he recognized him," she said. "Maxwell was looking right in Anthony's eyes, and touching his face. He could tell that there was something there."