By David Gambacorta
Philadelphia Daily News
PHILADELPHIA — Eyes brimming with tears, 7-year-old Bianca Scott and her older sister, Ketura Lang, pounded their fists against the second-floor window of their grandmother’s smoldering rowhouse.
They were trapped, and time was running out.
The girls choked on plumes of black smoke from an out-of-control kitchen fire Saturday morning while their relatives watched helplessly and prayed for a miracle.
The miracle arrived, whether by fate, luck or divine intervention, in the form of three city police officers. What followed was an improbable heroic rescue that played out like a scene from a Hollywood film.
The officers - Ryan Sullivan, Michael Pazdan and Ryan Clement, from the 22nd district in North Philadelphia - were on their way to the scene of a street fight when they rode past 19th Street near Susquehanna Avenue and spotted a frantic Ida Jackson outside the burning house.
The blaze was accidentally caused by one of her grandsons, who left the stove unattended while he ran out to pick up a tux for his prom, she said.
“Oh, I was just in a tizzy!” said Jackson, 68. “Everything had happened so quickly, and [the girls] were trapped in there.”
Pazdan, 26, said that he and Clement forced Jackson’s front door open, thinking that they could dash in and rescue the girls. They were repelled by the thick smoke and intense heat.
“It burned my lungs, so I thought, ‘There has to be another option,’ ” Pazdan said.
Thinking fast, Pazdan yelled up to Bianca. “I said, ‘Sweetie, I can’t get up there. You have to jump. I promise I’ll catch you.’ ”
Pazdan figured that the girl would feel about four times her actual weight if she made the jump as he prepared to make the catch of a lifetime.
“Sure enough, out the window she went,” he said. “She fell right into my arms and didn’t budge. It felt great.”
Worried onlookers let out a brief sigh. But the drama wasn’t over.
Sullivan, 23, noticed that Ketura, 13, was getting overwhelmed by the smoke she had inhaled.
“She was in bad shape,” said Sullivan, who served a four-year tour in the Marines. “She looked delirious. Her eyes were rolling in the back of her head and it looked like she was about to pass out.”
One neighbor rushed over with a ladder, while Pazdan scrambled into another resident’s house to scrounge up couch cushions, in case Ketura tumbled.
Sullivan clambered up the ladder and lunged for the teen. The two made an awkward climb back down the ladder to safety.
Both girls were uninjured, Jackson said. “They’re already fussing with each other again,” she laughed.
Jackson said she “can’t put into words how I feel towards those officers. They were mighty men.”
“God sent them on the right path; otherwise, I would have been sitting in a funeral parlor,” she added.
Sullivan and Pazdan humbly described their actions as simply part of their job.
“You never know what you’ll run into,” Pazdan said. “We were determined to not have those girls leave this earth. We’re really happy it all worked out.”
Copyright 2009 Philadelphia Daily News