Mother drops baby, toddler from burning apartment window in Lakemba
Date March 11, 2016 - 6:53AM
Megan Levy
A mother trapped in her burning second-storey apartment dropped her newborn baby and toddler from a window down to a passerby when flames tore through the building in Sydney's south-west overnight.
Firefighters arrived at the unit block on Wangee Road in Lakemba on Thursday night to find the 27-year-old woman sitting on the edge of a windowsill, unable to escape the flames that had engulfed her apartment. Just minutes earlier, she had dropped her two-day-old son and her toddler, aged two, down to a rescuer below.
Firefighters used a ladder to rescue the woman who, along with her children, escaped serious injury.
Residents from surrounding apartments made numerous calls to triple zero about 9.30pm on Thursday to report that a number of apartments in the three-storey block were on fire, and people were possibly trapped inside.
The fire is believed to have started in the kitchen of the 27-year-old woman's apartment, before spreading to surrounding apartments.
Senior Constable Jamie Wallace said the flames prevented the woman from reaching her front door, so she grabbed her two children and rushed to the window, where she flagged down a man below.
"She ended up dropping the two kids out the window and he caught them," Senior Constable Wallace said.
A witness said neighbours dragged out a mattress and placed it below the window, and a sheet was used to catch the children.
A NSW Police spokesman said the identity of the man who caught the children was not known.
"After doing his heroic deed, he just wandered off into the night, so we want to say thank you to him," the spokesman said.
After her children were safe, the woman climbed onto the windowsill, which is where Fire and Rescue NSW crews found her when they arrived.
http://www.smh.com.au/nsw/mother-dr...rtment-window-in-lakemba-20160310-gng3ur.html
