Neighbors screamed to the 6-year-old girl sitting on the third-floor window ledge, smoke billowing from the dark space behind her: "Jump! Jump!"
The girl was ready to make the 35-foot fall into the crowd of West Baltimore neighbors in front of the burning rowhouse in the 900 block of N. Mount St. But Firefighter Michael L. Proescher, scaling an aerial truck ladder, coaxed her into his arms.
"I said, 'Honey, don't jump. I'm coming to get you,' " recalled Proescher, a firefighter for almost 25 years. The little girl was one of six children saved from the house Oct. 17.
Proescher and nine firefighters will receive Meritorious Conduct Awards, the department's highest honor, and 24 others will receive Exemplary Performance Awards at 2 p.m. Sunday at the department's Medals Day ceremony at the War Memorial Building, 200 N. Gay St.
Battalion Chief Hector L. Torres said eight firefighters -- the largest number to receive the award for battling a single fire -- will receive the Meritorious Conduct Award for their work on North Mount Street.
After handing the unidentified child to a neighbor, the children's mother appeared and told him more children were inside the house, Proescher said.
A second alarm was sounded, and Proescher, emergency drivers Raymond K. Lockett and Martin D. Loftus, firefighters Michael Fields and Patrick M. Hoban, Lt. William Jones, and Capts. Gregory B. Ward and Joseph V. Brocato searched the house.
Proescher said the difficult task was finding the youngest child. He found the infant using his headlamp. "I think what happened was the baby rolled between the headboard and the box spring and was lying next to the wall," he said. "The baby had a diaper on, the light reflected it."
Lockett said, "Mount Street was one of those fires where everything went right."
Lockett, a 27-year veteran, said five children were found inside, all unconscious and scattered throughout the second and third stories. Four of them were in cardiac arrest. All, taken to hospitals, have recovered.
Investigators said children started the fire while playing with matches.
In addition to the eight Mount Street rescuers, a Meritorious Conduct Award will go to Firefighter Charles J. Campbell Sr., who saved Capt. Stephan G. Fugate from falling at an Oct. 10. fire in the 1000 block of N. Payson St.
Firefighter Frederick M. Moog will receive the award for saving a 6-year-old boy and 66-year-old woman from a fire in the first block of S. Morley St. on April 7.
Pub Date: 3/17/99