City workers help rescue a mother and baby

Toledo employees help a neighbor with fire victims

It was a dramatic rescue today when a woman and her baby were pulled from their burning home. The mother and daughter were trapped on the top level of a duplex on Macomber this morning.

Ed Mims and his co-worker Ernest Persley just happened to drive by this house when they saw smoke and a baby. Persley said, "I was nervous, I seen the kid hanging out the window."

Just before they pulled up, Aaron Stewart, who lives downstairs from the woman, says she called him from inside. "So I went and tried to go up there, and like I said, I couldn't see nothing as close as you are to me."

So he came back outside and grabbed a ladder. The three hoisted the ladder up to a window and Persley went for the baby first. "He handed the baby to me, and then we helped her down."

Firefighters say the mother lived there with several children. They say there was no electricity upstairs, so she ran an extension cord from a basement outlet to a space heater two floors up.

Toledo fire battalion chief Bill Hickey says, "There was a large amount of clothing covering the extension cord. It overheated, ignited the clothes, and that was the start of the fire."

None of the men consider themselves heroes. Mims said, "It was just something we happened to run up on."

But firefighters do. "They were cut off from any exit. This was the only exit they had, so yeah, these guys did, they saved their lives." We're told mother and baby are doing okay.

We called the city to find out if the two city employees will be recognized for saving two lives. We're told the commissioner of their department--streets, bridges and harbor-- will nominate them for November employees of the month.

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