Thursday, October 1, 2026
Glenna King celebrated her birthday for a second time on Aug. 12, when she turned 42. King’s first birthday this year, she said, was July 26, after she awoke in her apartment on East Olive Street in the early-morning hours to find it filled with smoke and heat.
King said she was overcome by thick and acrid black smoke when she opened her bedroom door‚ saw an orange glow and heard the loud, crackling sound of flames. Despite her best efforts to save her 6-year-old-son, Maxwell, who is autistic and cannot speak, she could not make it to his bedroom. She dialed 911 and, despite trying to fight back the smoke, she lost consciousness, the telephone still in her hand.
“The last thing I remember was listening for the fire trucks and thinking, Oh my God, they’ll never get here,” King recounted. “The next thing I knew, I woke up in Long Beach hospital and my son was running around the room and playing with a firefighter.”
Although King suffered severe smoke inhalation and inhalation burns and spent 11 days in the hospital, she said she is grateful for the heroic actions of Long Beach firefighters Anthony Fallon, Asst. Chief Antonio Cuevas and Capt. Hadrick Ray, who entered the home in the intense heat and, with virtually no visibility, pulled King and Maxwell to safety.
“It’s a miracle that [Maxwell] is alive,” his mother said. “He suffered no smoke inhalation. I was almost dead if they didn’t get to me in another minute. I’m very lucky and grateful.”
On Monday, Nassau County Legislator Denise Ford presented the firefighters with a citation on behalf of the Legislature at a ceremony that included King, the firefighters’ families and members of the Long Beach F.D. Ford — whose husband, Harry, a decorated, 27-year-veteran of the New York City Fire Department, died on Father’s Day 2001, along with two of his colleagues, in a fire in Queens — spoke of the risks that firefighters face every day and praised Fallon, Cuevas and Ray for their roles in the rescue.
“To me this underscores what firefighters do on a daily basis,” Ford said. “They put their personal safety aside ...”
