‘Saved her life’: Boston Fire Department thanks man for carrying blind woman out of burning building

BOSTON — More than a dozen people were forced out into the street after a fire broke out in their Boston apartment building.

One woman was rushed to the hospital from the scene after a neighbor carried her out of her apartment.

“It was really smokey, like I pretty much had to crawl,” said Socrate Joseph, one of the residents in the building that caught fire.

Residents in the apartment building at the corner of Tremont and Hammond streets in the city’s Roxbury neighborhood were woken up by smoke, flames, and the fire alarm around 3:30 Wednesday morning.

“Initially it came in as a medical alert, but when companies got here they saw the fire showing out the window, they struck the box and made an aggressive attack on the fire,” Boston Fire District Chief Rayshawn Johnson said.

Joseph lives on the third floor and was on his way out when he came across his neighbor on the second floor.

“She was trying to come out, but she was hesitant, kept walking back and forth,” said Joseph.

Joseph says the elderly woman is blind, and despite the worsening conditions, he knew he needed to help her.

“I ran back upstairs on the third floor and got my phone so I could use it as a flashlight, went back downstairs, looked for her, grabbed her hand, she was pulling back,” said Joseph. “Picked her up, put her over my shoulder, proceeded to go down the steps with her.”

As Joseph was carrying her down the stairs, firefighters were coming up.

“Companies were making their way up to the stairwell to attack the fire, they saw her up there and brought her down to the ambulance and EMS,” Johnson said.

In a statement, Boston Fire Commissioner Paul Burke thanked Joseph for his “heroic” action.

“Thank you to Socrate Joseph for rescuing his neighbor at today’s early morning fire on Tremont Street. His quick actions of carrying his neighbor to an exit and passing her to responding firefighters were heroic and undoubtedly saved her life in a rapidly progressing fire,” Burke said. “As always, thank you to our firefighters for quickly extinguishing this fire at great personal risk as they do every day they come to work.”

The woman was taken to the hospital and is going to be OK, thanks to the help of first responders and Joseph.

“It was just the right thing to do, even though she was being hesitant,” Joseph said. “But I just couldn’t leave her there. “If I did not, it would be on my conscience. I don’t know her, but it was the right thing to do. She is a neighbor, I’ve seen her before, I know she’s an elderly lady, a handicap, I would want someone to do that for my grandmother.”

A total of 12 adults and two kids were displaced and are being helped out by the Red Cross.

The building sustained about $500,000 worth of damage. The adjoining buildings were not damaged.

The cause of the fire remains under investigation.

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