Guardmember rescues woman from house fire

By Spc. Darron Salzer
National Guard Bureau

(1/15/10) – A Guardmember credits childhood lessons and training she received in the Army National Guard for her quick response to a house fire here Jan. 11. “When you were younger, they always told you to get low to the ground during a fire,” said Maj. Nathlon Jackson, an assignments officer for logistics and communications who works at the Army National Guard Readiness Center. “It’s certainly those things that hold true.”

“What I have learned in the military in first-aid training also helped me to access the situation and take charge when I realized that … [a] person was not responding.”

As Jackson walked to her car outside the readiness center during lunch, she noticed smoke pouring from the top of a nearby house.

She walked to the front door and began knocking to see if anyone was inside.

“As I walked over to the house, I could smell that something was burning, rather than just it being smoke from a pot burning in the kitchen,” she said. “I opened the mail slot with my hand and started to yell inside ‘hello, hello’ to see if anyone was home.”

A neighbor from across the street told Jackson that there was someone inside.

“I began to bang on the door louder, and the neighbor said that she had a key and went to get it, and I think she called 9-1-1 also.”

When the neighbor came back with the key, they opened the door and the neighbor pointed Jackson toward steps leading upstairs.

After climbing the stairs, she opened a door to a find a room full of smoke. “When I ran in, it was like an automatic suffocation from all of the smoke, and I fell to one knee ….”

When Jackson went to her knee, she could see the victim’s legs across the room through the smoke. She appeared to be sitting on the bed, but from what Jackson could see it was clear that the victim was disorientated and in shock.

“I kept yelling to her to come to my voice, and when she flopped over, that’s when I crawled into the room,” she said. “I started to feel around the bed until I found her body, and when I did, I just started pulling her to me.

“Luckily, the stairs were right by the bedroom door, so once I got her off of the bed we slid down the stairs together.”

Jackson vividly recalled the victim’s face covered in black soot and mucus. She could tell that she was in shock, so she wrapped the victim in her Gortex jacket.

“We sat on the curb, and I kept telling her that she was safe now. I made sure the jacket was on nicely, and we just waited for the ambulance to come.”

Jackson said when she first enlisted in the Army Guard, she saw a recruiter’s video highlighting Soldiers helping victims and she knew that was what she wanted to do.

“I was interested in helping the community,” she said. “That is what we do as Soldiers, and that’s why I joined the Army National Guard. I’ve always liked to help the community.”