VIDEO: A Santa Ana father is being praised as a hero after rescuing his entire family from a devastating house fire that broke out early Friday morning — a blaze that has now left him homeless and struggling to care for his young child, according to a GoFundMe organized by his daughter.
The fire erupted around 1:30 a.m. Friday at a home on South Linda Way, trapping all five family members on the second floor, according to the Orange County Fire Authority.
OCFA Capt. Sean Doran said a woman inside first smelled smoke and woke her husband, 67, who opened the bedroom door and was met with “enormous amounts of heat and smoke.” He immediately shut the door and made a split-second decision to climb out the window onto a patio cover.
From there, firefighters say, the father jumped nine feet to the ground, grabbed a ladder and raced to save his family. “He quickly closed the door, got himself out of the bedroom window and onto the patio cover, then jumped down to get a ladder,” Doran said. “All in all, a member of our community, in a very stressful time with no warning at all, took immediate action. And now we have five people who are alive today.”
