On an unusually icy night, a fire that began in the basement laundry room of an Edgewater Village townhouse led to a dramatic rescue before firefighters even arrived.
Quick thinking by several deputies from the Harford County Sheriff's Office helped save the lives of four children and their mother after the blaze broke out in the 1800 block of Eloise Lane shortly before 2:50 a.m. Friday.
When Deputy John Deasel Jr. arrived on the scene, three of the children and the mother were jumping from an upstairs window on the front of the house, urged on by a neighbor, Deasel and Sheriff's Office spokesperson Cristie Kahler said.
After hearing screams, Deasel, along with Sgt. Timothy Rumbaugh and two Maryland State Police troopers, Francis Shanks and Micah Spessato, ran to the back of the home, where they saw a child at a third-story window surrounded by thick black smoke.
"There were people screaming and a lot of smoke pouring out of the house," Deasel recalled Tuesday about the scene. He remembered the difficulty faced by the other rescuers as they tried to catch the other children and mother jumping from the front, as they were "coming out from so high, with so much momentum."
The 8-year-old boy in the back of the house was right above a deck, Deasel said. The deputy climbed up to the deck and urged the boy to make the jump from the window to the deck.
"He was screaming to us and we were screaming to him," Deasel said. "I just remember yelling at him to hold on, hang on until we get there."
"I was yelling, 'Come on, buddy,'" Deasel said. "He jumped and landed right on my chest, and the momentum knocked us both over."
Deasel recalled the boy yelling about the snow, as he was wearing just a T-shirt and pants.
The deputy, who has worked in law enforcement for four years and joined the Sheriff's Office six months ago, said the rescue was a rare experience, complicated by the cold night.
"It was a lot of ice on the sidewalk, so it was kind of hard to move quickly around the house," Deasel said.
One firefighter was treated at Upper Chesapeake Medical Center for an ankle injury after slipping on the ice. Ultimately, 70 firefighters spent 40 minutes fighting the blaze, which caused $150,000 worth of damage to the home.
Kahler said the rescue shows that deputies are prepared for anything, regardless of their training. Deasel did not have any fire training.
"We always talk about, our deputies are really training for whatever comes at them," Kahler noted. "You never fully understand the circumstances [until you are there]."
"They respond and they are trained to respond to any emergency," she said.
The mother in the Eloise Lane home, 34-year-old Anna Stansfield, and her children, ages 4 to 12, were evaluated at a local hospital and released, according to press releases.
The townhouse did not have smoke alarms. Built in 1976, it was not required to have sprinkler systems.
Andy Doyle, spokesperson for the Joppa-Magnolia Volunteer Fire Company, which was among those on the scene, said his company went through the neighborhood and offered smoke alarms just last summer, as part of the Edgewood Public Safety Initiative.
He said Monday he was "surprised" that a resident with so many children would not have smoke alarms in the house.
The moral of this incident, he said, is: "Smoke alarms save lives."
The initiative last summer "was amazing," he said. "We got to reach out to the community."
"If [the residents on Eloise Lane] had properly installed smoke alarms, the rescue would not need to have happened," Doyle said.
In an e-mail earlier, Doyle wrote: "It should be noted that the combined efforts of Harford County 911 dispatchers, Harford County Sheriff Deputies and Maryland State Police Troopers and Harford and Baltimore County Fire and Emergency Medical Personnel this story has a positive outcome."
"Unfortunately, the home did not have working smoke alarms and this incident could have potentially been avoided. With the changing of the clocks this weekend, the Maryland Fire Service urges residents to change their smoke alarm batteries. If their alarms are greater than 10 years old, they should be replaced with a new 10 year smoke alarm," he wrote.
The cause of the fire remains under investigation, Oliver Alkire, senior state deputy fire marshal and spokesperson for the Office of the State Fire Marshal, said.
It's the second fire on Eloise Lane this year. At the end of January, one person was seriously injured and seven people were displaced by a fire in the 1900 block, just a block away.
That fire, which was also early in the morning in subfreezing temperatures, was ruled accidental, from discarded smoking materials, Alkire said.
Sun reporter Jessica Anderson contributed to this article.