Seahunt
DIS Veteran
- Joined
- Jan 19, 2002
- Messages
- 4,979
I thought you might like to read an article from the local news here in FL about some heroic British visitors 
Tourists brave burning home to rescue paralyzed woman
British tourist Christine Brittain doubts Disney can offer better thrills.
The retired nurse, who arrived Saturday to shop, sightsee and visit Epcot, was chatting poolside at her friend's vacation home when she heard what sounded like quarreling. She dismissed it at first, but the voices next door grew louder and more frantic -- and then she heard a woman crying out, "Help us! Please! Someone help us! My mother! My mother! She can't walk!"
Brittain, 58, charged into the woman's burning home.
"My friend, Maureen, said to me, 'Tell me, why did you run in that house?' " Brittain, who is from Essex, England, said Wednesday. "Truly, I didn't think. I could see what I was going into, but I knew I had to help. Your adrenaline goes, and so do you."
Brittain, her son Darren and fellow Brits Maureen and Barry White, pub owners who live outside of London, were hailed as heroes for saving the life of Clarilia Mondesir, 57, a paralyzed woman who lives next door to the Whites' vacation home.
They dragged her to safety late Tuesday.
"Without their help, something worse would have happened," said Lineda Mondesir, Clarilia Mondesir's daughter, who also praised the actions of Lake County Deputy Sheriff Stephanie Pfiester, the first deputy to arrive at the scene.
Pfiester braved the fire, too. She was treated at South Lake Hospital for minor smoke inhalation, sheriff's Sgt. Christie Mysinger said.
Investigators think the blaze that destroyed the Mondesirs' five-bedroom home on Woodcrest Way in Lake County was started about 8:30 p.m. Tuesday by an 8-year-old nephew who was playing with matches in his room.
The boy told a fire detective that he dropped a lit match onto his bedding, said Bill Newman of the state Fire Marshal's Office.
Jack Fillman, an assistant chief for Lake County Fire & Rescue, said, "He panicked probably and dragged the burning blanket, leaving a trail of fire as he went running through the house."
Wearing clothes borrowed from friends and neighbors Wednesday, Lineda Mondesir, 29, surveyed the smoking ruins of the home that she and her sister, Daisy, 26, bought three years ago.
She salvaged some photos.
The sisters lived there with their nephew and their mother, who, despite cancer and a stroke, has outlived a doctor's bleak prognosis a year ago that she would only live three months.
"It's been a very rough year, one thing after another," Mondesir said.
She and her mother were praying Tuesday, as they do nightly, listening to a hip-hop-influenced gospel recording when she detected the faint tone of a smoke alarm. She then found the fire.
Unable to lift their mother alone, the sisters cried out for help.
Repelled by flames in the front of the home, Christine Brittain's son Darren, 34, who has a cleaning company in England, burst through a wooden fence and the pool door where he found the sisters struggling to carry their mother.
He, his mother and Barry White, 60, were seared by the flames.
Maureen White, 57, said she tried to keep the boy calm, but he wanted to run into the home, too, crying out for his aunts and his "mommy," the name he calls his grandmother.
Most of the heroes made up Wednesday for sleep they lost Tuesday.
But not Christine Brittain.
Too wound up by the drama, she never changed out of her pajamas and she still had ashes in her hair as she met with reporters.
Lineda Mondesir also hadn't slept.
Her employer, Marriott International, had offered her emergency housing. But she worried about her mother, who was bruised in the rescue but resting comfortably Wednesday at Florida Hospital Celebration Health.
"I thank the Lord," Mondesir said. "The only thing that really matters to me [is] everybody is safe."
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Tourists brave burning home to rescue paralyzed woman
British tourist Christine Brittain doubts Disney can offer better thrills.
The retired nurse, who arrived Saturday to shop, sightsee and visit Epcot, was chatting poolside at her friend's vacation home when she heard what sounded like quarreling. She dismissed it at first, but the voices next door grew louder and more frantic -- and then she heard a woman crying out, "Help us! Please! Someone help us! My mother! My mother! She can't walk!"
Brittain, 58, charged into the woman's burning home.
"My friend, Maureen, said to me, 'Tell me, why did you run in that house?' " Brittain, who is from Essex, England, said Wednesday. "Truly, I didn't think. I could see what I was going into, but I knew I had to help. Your adrenaline goes, and so do you."
Brittain, her son Darren and fellow Brits Maureen and Barry White, pub owners who live outside of London, were hailed as heroes for saving the life of Clarilia Mondesir, 57, a paralyzed woman who lives next door to the Whites' vacation home.
They dragged her to safety late Tuesday.
"Without their help, something worse would have happened," said Lineda Mondesir, Clarilia Mondesir's daughter, who also praised the actions of Lake County Deputy Sheriff Stephanie Pfiester, the first deputy to arrive at the scene.
Pfiester braved the fire, too. She was treated at South Lake Hospital for minor smoke inhalation, sheriff's Sgt. Christie Mysinger said.
Investigators think the blaze that destroyed the Mondesirs' five-bedroom home on Woodcrest Way in Lake County was started about 8:30 p.m. Tuesday by an 8-year-old nephew who was playing with matches in his room.
The boy told a fire detective that he dropped a lit match onto his bedding, said Bill Newman of the state Fire Marshal's Office.
Jack Fillman, an assistant chief for Lake County Fire & Rescue, said, "He panicked probably and dragged the burning blanket, leaving a trail of fire as he went running through the house."
Wearing clothes borrowed from friends and neighbors Wednesday, Lineda Mondesir, 29, surveyed the smoking ruins of the home that she and her sister, Daisy, 26, bought three years ago.
She salvaged some photos.
The sisters lived there with their nephew and their mother, who, despite cancer and a stroke, has outlived a doctor's bleak prognosis a year ago that she would only live three months.
"It's been a very rough year, one thing after another," Mondesir said.
She and her mother were praying Tuesday, as they do nightly, listening to a hip-hop-influenced gospel recording when she detected the faint tone of a smoke alarm. She then found the fire.
Unable to lift their mother alone, the sisters cried out for help.
Repelled by flames in the front of the home, Christine Brittain's son Darren, 34, who has a cleaning company in England, burst through a wooden fence and the pool door where he found the sisters struggling to carry their mother.
He, his mother and Barry White, 60, were seared by the flames.
Maureen White, 57, said she tried to keep the boy calm, but he wanted to run into the home, too, crying out for his aunts and his "mommy," the name he calls his grandmother.
Most of the heroes made up Wednesday for sleep they lost Tuesday.
But not Christine Brittain.
Too wound up by the drama, she never changed out of her pajamas and she still had ashes in her hair as she met with reporters.
Lineda Mondesir also hadn't slept.
Her employer, Marriott International, had offered her emergency housing. But she worried about her mother, who was bruised in the rescue but resting comfortably Wednesday at Florida Hospital Celebration Health.
"I thank the Lord," Mondesir said. "The only thing that really matters to me [is] everybody is safe."
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good on them
Thanks for sharing.
