Editor’s note: As part of our year-end coverage, we look back at some of the biggest and most heroic news stories, and reconnect with some of the officers and departments involved in the incidents to find out what has developed since, and how the department has faired in the days and months following.
In this article, Officer Eric Seniakevgch recounts the morning his commute to work was halted by a house fire and the heroic actions he took to save the lives of those inside.
By Eric Seniakevgch
Woodbridge, N.J. Police
I had been a police dispatcher in Woodbridge for two years and a volunteer firefighter for six. It was about 5 a.m. when I left my girlfriend’s house in Carteret and was heading toward Woodbridge to work my second of four straight twelve-hour shifts as a dispatcher when I saw a column of black smoke on Capp Street.
My first thought was a car fire, but as I drove closer, I came across a home in flames and no fire apparatus in sight.
As I parked my car and ran toward the home, I watched five people exit the house. When I asked if anyone was still inside, they told me two were trapped in the basement.
I ran into the home and toward the basement — after just five or six seconds the fire’s heat and thick smoke forced me back out the way I came.
Finding a Way Out
One of the people who’d escaped the house told me there were two basement windows on the side of the house, so I ran to the window and smashed it in. Sticking my head through the window, I could see two occupants laying face-down — a male and female who appeared to both be in their fifties. I screamed for them to get up and both jumped to their feet.
The window was about eight feet off the ground. The woman tried jumping toward the window. I crawled about halfway in to reach her and pulled her back through the window and outside.
As the man tried to do the same, we realized he couldn’t fit through the window, which was only half broken. I knew I needed to break the rest of it to get him out but I couldn’t. Then I remembered I’d seen a sledgehammer in the yard and ran to get it.
After smashing the rest of the window open, I leaned in to grab the man. He had a cut on his forearm — from what, I wasn’t sure. A boy who’d fled the home offered his shirt and I used it to tie around the man’s gash and lifted him out of window.
I told the couple to wait for EMS to arrive. As firefighters approached the scene, I walked to the nearest fire hydrant and offered to make the connection for them.
On the Clock
I was treated on the scene for some minor cuts from the broken window before calling the lieutenant to warn him I’d be late. We were short-staffed, he said, so I was needed quickly, despite the fact that the police chief needed a statement from me.
So, as if nothing happened at all, I was on my way to work my usual 12-hour shift. It wasn’t until several news crews and members of the department arrived at the dispatch center to discuss the incident that my lieutenant realized the gravity of the situation: I’d saved two lives on my way to work.
My co-workers were just glad I was there when it happened. I was glad my training as a firefighter and dispatcher came together in order to save them. After that I received multiple proclamations from Woodbridge and surrounding townships, and I received an offer to be a part of the television show ‘Saving Heroes.’
The media attention and commendations from the community were, to say the least, bizarre. This is a brotherhood and any one of us would have done the same as I had. We all stick together.