Neighbor describes rescuing kids trapped during Woburn house fire

Two children had to be rescued when flames broke out at a multi-family home in Woburn, Massachusetts, early Sunday morning.

Neighbors told NBC10 Boston the two children were home alone in the apartment on the upper floor on Richmond Park and couldn't get down the stairs inside the building when the fire started around 4 a.m.

As flames started tearing through a three-unit home Sunday morning, Paul LeBlanc said his apartment suddenly illuminated.

“It was completely orange,” he said. “It was insane.”

He then heard panicked voices in the apartment above.

“At that point we could hear screaming from the children,” he said.

LeBlanc and another neighbor tried to reach them.

“I started kicking the hell out of the door,” he said.

But the smoke and flames were overwhelming.

“We could hear the kids screaming,” he said. “We were trying to direct them to our voices, come to us, crawl to us, they were becoming more shrill and panicked.”

Finally the young boy appeared at a window and LeBlanc told him to jump.

 “I told him I’d catch him,” he said. “We mistimed it, I broke his fall, it wasn’t a perfect landing.”

Firefighters then arrived on the scene and were able to rescue the boy’s older sister with a ladder.

LeBlanc and the other tenants lost everything, but everyone got out and he’s grateful the children survived.

 “It was something I felt good about,” he said. “It was a sad moment.”

Both children were taken to the hospital for treatment - their conditions were not immediately clear.

“I thought my son was crying so I got up, and there was just like an orange glow," said Elizabeth King, who lives on the street. "And when I checked that it wasn’t my son, our closet it has a window in it and that’s when I noticed that there was a fire. And I said to my husband, 'There’s a fire, there’s a fire, there’s a fire, there’s a fire.' It was really, really scary and traumatizing to be honest."

She added that the young girl goes to the same school as her daughter and they're all worried about her and her brother.

Three families live in the building and they are all displaced for the time being. The cause of the fire remains under investigation.

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