Apartment Fire Rescue

If you go to the right website on the internet you can see an amazing video. You see a smoky scene. A building is on fire. There on the ground you see a group of people looking up the side of a building gesturing to someone above who is out of the picture. All of a sudden you see the group rush towards the side of the building and as they get to the wall of the building, something flies into the picture from up above. One of the men catches the bundle before it hits the ground. What’s going on?

Well, in December of 2005, Tracinda Foxe's apartment building in the Bronx caught on fire. With flames quickly engulfing her third floor bedroom, she was forced to contemplate the unthinkable. Outside, a group of onlookers had gathered some 30 feet below her open window, and they watched with growing concern as smoke billowed around the mother and her 1-month-old child. With no fresh air in the apartment, Tracinda leaned out the window with her baby.

Finally, with all other options exhausted, Tracinda let go. The infant tumbled three stories down into the waiting arms of Felix Vazquez, a Housing Authority employee and catcher on a local baseball team. A former lifeguard, Vazquez performed mouth-to-mouth resuscitation on the baby until paramedics arrived, which saved its life.

Moments later, Tracinda was rescued from her apartment by firefighters, and was reunited with her child. Neither was seriously injured. Asked later about the painful decision to drop her baby from the window, Tracinda said: "I prayed that someone would catch him and save his life…. I said, 'God, please save my son.'"