Public Employee Press

Local 1549 member saves family in fire

It was 4 in the morning.

A light sleeper, Fidel Morales awoke abruptly as he sensed something wrong. His eyes quickly focused on the door to the bedroom, and he saw smoke seeping into the room.

"I yelled to my wife, 'Get the baby!'" Morales said as he described the fire that engulfed his second-floor, three- bedroom apartment in the Bronx on Oct. 28.

A double-amputee with a prosthetic left arm below the elbow and prosthetic right leg below the knee, Morales had some pretty serious scrambling to do. But he didn't let his disabilities impede his effort to get his family out of danger within minutes.

"I don't know how I did it, but I just put on my prosthetic leg without thinking," said Morales, a member of Clerical-Administrative Employees Local 1549, who works as a Clerical Associate at the Dept. of Corrections. The local helped out Morales with a $3,000 donation from a fund for members who face emergencies.

Looking back at the fire, Morales recounted how he reacted quickly to get his extended family and a visiting friend out of the apartment at 126 Taylor Avenue. He needed to yank his wife, Diomaris Perez Morales, off the couple's bed because she froze up after collecting their 9-month-old baby, Abel Fidel Morales, in her arms.

Morales called out to his niece, Vanessa Perez, to leave her room. Nixey Guzman, the couple's guest, screamed after first thinking Morales was joking about the fire.

As Morales' wife carried the couple's child and headed for the door, Morales cried out, "Don't open it!" But it was too late; she opened the door and smoke swept into the apartment. Morales rushed over to slam the door shut to prevent the flames in the stairway from coming into the apartment.

The smoke blinded everyone. But the group managed to make it to the balcony by clinging to the wall.

Morales' first concern was the baby.

He called out to his neighbor, who was standing below the balcony.

" 'Please catch him,' " Morales said. "He did."

Morales gathered the others to wait on the balcony for Firefighters to arrive with a ladder. But suddenly Morales lost his balance. He grabbed for a railing, but he lost his grip and fell to the ground, fracturing his left leg. Emergency Medical Services workers rushed him by ambulance to Jacobi Medical Center Hospital for treatment.

The couple now resides in a homeless shelter, and they were waiting to be approved as tenants at a new home in the Bronx, as PEP went to press. Morales uses a wheelchair as he recovers from his injury. He said his employer has been very accommodating as he continues on payroll while he uses his built-up sick leave.

"This was an experience I don't wish to repeat," Morales said.