Half-Naked Neighbor Battles Apartment Fire, Then Passes Out

A barefoot, shirtless man burst into a neighbor's burning apartment early Saturday, using a fire extinguisher to douse the blaze before passing out from smoke inhalation and being dragged to safety.

Joe Ferraro, 52, said he was lounging in bed around 8 a.m. when his wife smelled smoke and sent him to find the source. Glancing out the kitchen window, he saw smoke billowing from a neighbor's apartment across the alley, on 8th Street in Seal Beach.

He threw on a pair of pants ("I was in my birthday suit"), grabbed a fire extinguisher and ran to the rescue.

Inside the second-story apartment, he checked each room for occupants before reaching a bedroom filled with smoke and flames.

Dropping to all fours, he crawled through the haze, feeling for bodies. Finding no one, he uncorked the fire extinguisher and sprayed till it was empty.

At that point, having inhaled a cloud of smoke and extinguisher chemicals, Ferraro thought to himself, "I might need a breath of fresh air."

He stood up to walk outside and "the next thing I remember, I woke up to a fireman and police officer standing over me, yelling, 'Man down.' "

Ferraro had passed out from smoke inhalation and been dragged outside by rescue workers.

Chuckling as he retold the story by phone Saturday night, Ferraro said he assumed "Man down" meant he had missed someone in his search of the apartment. "I didn't realize they were talking about me."

A magnifying glass left on a stack of papers near a sunny window started the fire, Ferraro heard later.

Capt. Marc Stone of the Orange County Fire Authority couldn't confirm the cause of the blaze, but said the rest of Ferraro's account seemed on the money.

Firefighters were alerted to the blaze by someone knocking on the fire station door around 8 a.m., Stone said. Engine 44 raced to the 200 block of 8th Street, found a second-story apartment on fire and treated "a citizen with no shoes and no shirt" who had dashed into the home with a fire extinguisher before collapsing from smoke inhalation.

Stone said the fire left $20,000 in damage, mostly to contents inside the apartment.