Stanley M. Duggan saved Sophia B. Reister, and attempted to save others from burning, Baltimore, Maryland, May 11, 1952. At night while Mrs. Reister, 74, and her husband, 76, salesman, were in their apartment on the second floor of a house, a fire broke out and ignited the walls and ceiling in a living room beneath their apartment. Dense smoke filled a hall and stairway leading to the second floor. The Reisters felt heat and opened a kitchen door at the top of the stairway. Encountering thick smoke, they quickly closed the door. The flames attracted Duggan, 34, linotype operator, and several other men, and they entered the front door of the house. Visibility in the hall was poor. Duggan, who was unfamiliar with the interior of the house, ran along the hall to the stairway and ascended to the second floor, shouting continually in an effort to locate occupants. He heard the calls of Mrs. Reister and groped to the kitchen door and opened it. Duggan drew Mrs. Reister from the kitchen. Ordering Reister to follow them to the first floor, Duggan guided Mrs. Reister down the stairway. Reister became confused and stopped at the foot of the stairway. Heat was intense, and visibility in the smoke had lessened greatly. Duggan assisted Mrs. Reister outside. Returning to Reister, he led him from the house and retraced his course to the Reister apartment to search for others. Dense flames burst from the living room, ignited the first-floor hallway walls, and spread rapidly up the stairway, forcing the other men to withdraw from the house. Finding no one in the apartment, Duggan opened the kitchen door momentarily and saw that the entire stairway was burning fiercely. Running to a window 18 feet above the ground, Duggan opened it and leaned as far outside as he could. Heat became blistering, and Duggan was burned severely. Firemen arrived and raising a ladder to the window lowered Duggan to the ground. They extinguished the flames soon afterward. All other occupants had escaped from the house. Duggan had second- and third-degree burns of the trunk and legs and lesser burns of the upper body and was hospitalized six weeks. He recovered. 42568-3811
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42568-3811