Clay, NY -- Lying in bed with a book Friday night Catherine Poon had read only five pages before her children pounded on her bedroom wall at 37 Bayberry Circle. “Mommy, Mommy, the house is on fire.” Poon, 51, jumped out of bed. She opened her bedroom door, then shut it quickly because of the heat and smoke in...
View full sizeA fire early Saturday morning heavily damaged this home at 37 Bayberry Circle in Liverpool. Clay, NY -- Lying in bed with a book Friday night Catherine Poon had read only five pages before her children pounded on her bedroom wall at 37 Bayberry Circle.
“Mommy, Mommy, the house is on fire.”
Poon, 51, jumped out of bed. She opened her bedroom door, then shut it quickly because of the heat and smoke in the hallway.
Across the street at 36 Bayberry Circle, Lateef Haskins had just come home from a late softball game. He was thinking about taking a shower, but settled in to watch a little ESPN first.
Faintly, he heard Matthew Poon, his neighbor, across the street.
“He was yelling, ‘Help, fire!’” Haskins said.
In separate interviews Saturday, Poon and Haskins recalled the chaotic night. Haskins and Onondaga County Sheriff deputies rescued Poon, her son Matthew, 16, daughter Scarlet, 21, and niece Amy Chei, 20.
Poon said she doesn’t know who grabbed her and helped her down the ladder to safety.
“I’m grateful. They saved my whole family,” she said. “My neighbor was very brave.”
“I would want somebody to do the same if my family was in that situation,” Haskins said.
Throughout the day Saturday, cars slowed as they passed the fire-ravaged house with charred household goods in the front yard. Neighbors stopped neighbors on the street asking if anyone had set up a fund, or is collecting items for the family.
Haskins, and his wife, Jessica, have offered their home as a drop-off spot for people wishing to make donations.
Bayberry Circle is a quiet street of suburban homes shaded by tall trees.
That quiet was broken by chaos Friday night.
Investigators are still trying to find the cause of the fire reported at 11:22 p.m. They believe it started from a faulty electrical cord on the home’s main floor. None of the smoke detectors was working at the time of the fire.
Hearing Matthew Poon’s cries, Haskins called to his wife to dial 911. He sprinted across the street dialing the number on his cell phone, too.
Haskins, a father of three, yelled into the night for someone to get a ladder. Nobody came.
He grabbed a hose to wet down the house. That didn’t help.
“Matt was saying it was hot and ‘help,’” Haskins said. “I didn’t want to leave him. You could see flames coming from the roof.”
The 34-year-old iron worker sprinted back to his house and grabbed a ladder, setting it up against the burning building.
As he was setting up the ladder, when Onondaga County Sheriff’s deputies arrived.
Deputy Mike Doupe remembers seeing a man in a baseball shirt with the number 10 on it spraying the house with the hose. The ladder was in place and Matthew Poon was in the window.
“The boy just couldn’t see because of the smoke,” Doupe said.
Doupe ran up the ladder and guided Matthew Poon’s feet onto the ladder, he said. The fire caused the window to explode and flames blew through the ladder, singeing both Doupe and the boy and causing Matthew Poon to fall.
Haskins said he broke Matthew’s fall and then moved the ladder over to rescue the next person.
While Deputies Doupe and Tim Hahn used the ladder to rescue Catherine Poon, Haskins ran across the street to 38 Bayberry Circle to borrow Suzanne Conley’s ladder to rescue the other two women.
Conley said she could see a small fire in the home’s living room. By the time Haskins had pulled her ladder out of the garage and put it up against the right side of the house, it was engulfed with flames, she said.
“It went whoosh!” Conley said.
Haskins used the second ladder to rescue Scarlet Poon and Chei. One of the women fell from the ladder, Doupe said.
Scarlet Poon was the last to escape the building and a deputy dragged her across the lawn away from raging fire, Haskins said.
“He was fearless. I don’t think Lateef thought about himself at all,” Conley said of her neighbor, as she looked across at the blackened shell of 37 Bayberry Circle.
Doupe agreed with Conley’s assessment of Haskins.
“What that guy did was incredible,” Doupe said. “My opinion of him and Moyers Corners (Fire Department) — they’re incredible.”
Deputies get paid to do what they do, Doupe said. Haskins and the volunteers at the fire department don’t.
“They are amazing,” he said.
After the rescues, Doupe said he was getting oxygen at an ambulance and he saw Haskins come up to check on him. They made eye contact and Haskins flashed a thumbs up at Doupe. Doupe first learned Haskins’ name from a reporter on Saturday night.
Scarlet Poon and Chei suffered from smoke inhalation. Scarlet also had a broken vertebra, her mother said.
Matthew Poon suffered second-degree burns on his upper body and smoke inhalation. His mother suffered from smoke inhalation.
Doupe suffered severe smoke inhalation and first-degree burns to his face. Hahn also suffered from smoke inhalation, and Deputy Bob Bell suffered a dislocated shoulder and a broken bone while bringing the ladder to the house.
Everyone was taken to Upstate University Hospital. The Poons and Chei were treated and released Saturday.
The family’s 10-month-old puppy, Sebastin, died in the fire. A friend buried it in the backyard Saturday morning.
Saturday morning, Catherine Poon returned to her damaged house. A hospital bracelet was on her arm, and her hands were still blackened from the fire when she got out of the van driven by her friend Caryn Kogos-Irwin.
Originally from Hong Kong, Poon said she has been in the United States for 21 years, living the past 11 on Bayberry Circle. She works at Wegmans, as does her daughter and son.
She’s been very unlucky recently, Poon said. Her husband, Lap Tak Poon, died in 2008, and now the fire.
For now, the family is staying in an extended-stay hotel until insurance adjusters can survey the damage, Kogos-Irwin said.
Staff writer Robert A. Baker contributed to this story.