By Scott Brinton
When Fernandez found the children, Dante and Dant, lying by the bathtub and toilet, they were suffering from smoke inhalation. One had passed out. The other wasn't breathing, according to fire officials.
As it happened, Fernandez and Cassidy, both 26, were driving on Nassau Road in Roosevelt at about 1 p.m., headed to do errands, when they spotted a black smoke plume billowing from a nearby neighborhood.
Cassidy carries a police scanner in his SUV, so the two volunteers heard the call for the blaze. They hurried to 23 Park Place and found the three-story home spewing fire and smoke from the second and third floors.
Cassidy said the twins' mother, Brenda Rowe, was on the front lawn crying and screaming that her children were inside the house. She had attempted to get them out herself, but thick smoke stopped her.
Roosevelt Fire Chief Bill Stockdale and a team of Roosevelt volunteers pulled up to the home at nearly the same time as Fernandez and Cassidy.
The Merrick volunteers offered to help. Stockdale told them to get the children out while his volunteers stretched a water hose into the home to quell the fire.
Fernandez and Cassidy grabbed a ladder from the Roosevelt engine and slammed it against the house to smash the second-story window of a room where the children were thought to be.
Fernandez, a New York City police officer, scaled the ladder first, followed by Cassidy, who is a United Parcel Service worker.
Fernandez saw no children. The mother yelled that her boys were in the next room over.
Again, Fernandez and Cassidy flung the ladder against the house to break the window. When Fernandez got to the bathroom, he spotted one child on the floor, grabbed him and passed him to Cassidy, who handed the boy to waiting Roosevelt fire volunteers.
The second child was harder to see through the thick smoke that had engulfed the home, but Fernandez managed to find him, and Cassidy brought the child down to safety.
The boy, however, had stopped breathing.
Roosevelt firefighters Mattie Williams and Darrell Riddick performed cardiopulmonary resuscitation on the child, and shortly after, his lungs started to work again.
The twins were rushed to Nassau University Medical Center in East Meadow, where they were treated for smoke inhalation and first- and second-degree burns to their legs and chest.
At press time, they were listed in critical condition in the Children's Intensive Care Unit. Rowe was also taken to the medical center, where she was treated for smoke inhalation and listed in stable condition.
Neither Fernandez nor Cassidy had ever had a call to save someone from a burning building before, and now that they have, they both feel deservedly proud.
It feels really good knowing we were there at the right time, said Cassidy, and that the outcome of the rescue was successful.
Fernandez said, It feel good to help save two kids' lives.
Still, both are humble about their rescue effort. Cassidy said, It just so happened that T.J. and I were there to make the attempt to get the trapped children.
Fernandez and Cassidy visited the twins in the hospital last Wednesday and Thursday evenings.
Both credited Chief Stockdale with quick thinking in allowing them to search for the twins, which gave Roosevelt volunteers the chance to immediately start putting the fire out.
Stockdale said he plans to nominate the two Merrick volunteers for a citation.
Fernandez and Cassidy are members of the Merrick Fire Department's Engine Company No. 3 on Merrick Avenue. Fernandez, a former company captain, is a nine-year department member. Cassidy has been with the department for seven years.
The Nassau County Arson and Bomb Squad and the Fire Marshal's Office are investigating the cause of the blaze, police officials said.
