Merced man saves neighbor from burning building

A 33-year-old man from Merced made it just in time to help a man out of a burning duplex that resulted in three injured and two pets killed.

“By the time we got him all the way out the flames were coming to the doorway,” Isaac Coronado told the Sun-Star Thursday. “After I got away from the house I could hear wires popping.”

Just before 2 a.m on Wednesday, Coronado said, he was at home, just half a block away from the duplex that burned on 1100 Block of U Street, when he smelled smoke. He went outside to see what was burning and said he, “took off running once I heard someone yelling for help.”

“It (the fire) got really big really fast,” he said. “There was nobody around when I got there.”

When Coronado arrived at the duplex, he said there was a man inside the house, close to the doorway. The man’s son was trying to remove him from the building, he said, but he was struggling to stand.

Coronado said he ran in and was able to get the man out without getting hurt.

“I’ve never helped anybody like that,” Coronado said. “It was crazy. I was in shock all night thinking about what would've happened if I wasn’t there.”

If it was any other day Coronado said he wouldn’t have been around because he works graveyard shifts.

“I was just trying to get him out and from being hurt,” he said.

Soon after firefighters and other personnel arrived at the scene and were able to control the fire by 2:16 a.m.

As of Thursday, Battalion Chief Corey Haas with the Merced Fire Department said the cause of the fire is still under investigation but “at this point we don’t think the fire is suspicious.”

Officials said the fire displaced nine people, the man Coronado rescued, who lived in the duplex with his son and wife, and a family of six who lived in the other unit.

The three who were injured were sent transported to a hospital, officials said, with two people in critical condition.

About half of the building was damaged and was deemed uninhabitable, officials reported.

This story was originally published June 22, 2017 at 6:13 PM with the headline "Merced man saves neighbor from burning building."