F. Daniel Calix

F. Daniel Calix helped rescue a man from burning, Flemington, New Jersey, November 22, 2021. The 59-year-old man who breathed with the assistance of bottled oxygen, told authorities he had been laying on his couch and smoking when, suddenly, the living room of his second-floor apartment was in flames. Calix, 23, roofer, was returning home when he saw flames coming from the man’s living room window and heard an explosion. Calix summoned his two brothers, 35 and 29, with whom he shared an apartment in another wing of the same building, and, together, they went and kicked down the man’s front door. The door opened into a narrow, enclosed stairway which led to the man’s apartment. Calix and his brothers, singly, climbed the steps and tried to enter the burning living room off the top stairway landing but were each turned back by smoke and exited. Recalling he had a flashlight on his cellphone, the oldest brother used it as he re-entered and rushed up the stairway. Peering through thick smoke, he heard the man calling for help on the living room floor 8 feet away and moved to grasp him in a bear hug from behind. As the oldest brother dragged the man to the top of the stairway, Calix and the other brother appeared and each grasped the man’s legs, and all three carried him down the stairway. At one point, an explosion caused a flash that burned the oldest brother’s right ear and face, and blew a chair onto the stairway. Calix threw the chair out of their path and rejoined his brothers to carry the man outside onto a railed-in concrete porch, where they laid him in a corner away from the figuring doorway as police arrived. Police then moved the man over the rail farther to safety, where paramedics treated the man, who was flown to a hospital burn center. Police stated the man has recovered. Calix inhaled smoke but was not treated; he recovered.