“This is turning into a habit, I guess.”
Those were the deadpan words of Chris Esteves Thursday after rushing into a burning apartment house on Olivia Street to save a 76-year-old woman.
The fire badly damaged the 92-year-old apartment house at 92 – 94 Olivia St.
Luckily, there were no injuries.
Why did Esteves joke about his actions as a “habit?”
Because he’s the same guy who rushed into a burning house on Fifth Street in Ansonia in October 2009. In that fire, Esteves helped drag out an elderly person who later died.
This time Esteves’ blind heroism saved Theresa Tiano, who has lived in Derby for 49 years. She lived in an apartment on the building’s third floor, which was gutted by fire at about 12:40 p.m.
“I was in bed and somebody rang the bell,” Tiano said, a blanket wrapped around her shoulders as she stood on the sidewalk watching firefighters attack the blaze.
Tiano is seen in the photo below, talking to a reporter. Story continues below.
“I got to the door and he said ‘You better get out, there’s a fire,’” Tiano said. The frail, elderly woman made it out unscathed.
“I smelled smoke, but I thought it was somebody making toast,” she said. “I had no idea what was going on.”
Esteves said he had just parked on Olivia Street for a doctor’s appointment when he saw a crowd of people yelling that a lady was trapped on the third floor of the house.
The house is at the intersection of Olivia and West Fourth streets, next to the Derby Post Office.
“They said she wasn’t able to come out because she uses a walker or a cane. I just went in,” Esteves said.
Flames were jutting out the front of the third floor when Esteves went in.
“They weren’t as bad inside her apartment,” he said.
Esteves walked Tiano downstairs and escorted her outside.
“Then people started saying there was another person inside,” Esteves said. “I wasn’t sure if they were talking about the same lady, so I went back in.”
By that time, Tiano’s apartment was fully ablaze.
“It was quick,” he said.
Tiano said marshals from Derby’s Superior Court, across the street from the apartment house, were also helping to get other tenants out.
The fire displaced 17 people from six families. Derby Mayor Anthony Staffieri contacted the Valley Red Cross for assistance.
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There were at least four people in the house when the fire started.
Steven Dennis, who lives in the third floor apartment where the fire started, said he was home with two other people at the time the fire started.
“I don’t know how it happened,” Dennis said. “I looked on the porch, and it was just flames. I knocked on doors and tried to tell people to get out.”
Dennis left his cat, Angel, behind.
He worried about the damage to the apartment, but was most concerned about his grandmother’s ashes, which were stored in an urn inside the apartment.
By about 2 p.m. firefighter Lou Oliwa had brought both the cat and the urn outside for Dennis.
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“I don’t know what the damage is looking like up there, but there’s probably not too much saved,” Dennis said.
There were also six parakeets left in Tiano’s apartment.
Firefighters could not locate the birds as of about 2 p.m., but the cages had been left open so they believed the birds were able to fly away.
Firefighters as of 2 p.m. were just finishing putting out the fire, and starting to investigate the cause, according to Fire Chief William Nicoletti.
The fire started toward the front of the third floor apartment. The cause is still unknown.
Building owner Doug Leone said he was trying to make sure all the families in the house were able to find another place to stay tonight.
Nicoletti said about 50 firefighters responded. Shelton Fire Department provided mutual aid at the scene, and the Shelton ambulance corps responded for rehab. The Orange Fire Department provided mutual aid to cover Derby’s fire stations while its firefighters and ladder truck were at the scene.
The call for the fire came in at 12:43 p.m. Firefighters were on the scene at 12:46 p.m. and remained there until 5:16 p.m.
It was the second serious fire on Olivia Street in less than a year.
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