Mother’s intuition and a closed bedroom door likely kept a Puyallup apartment fire from being deadly, fire investigators said Monday.
Early Sunday morning, Juliana Vega-Zamora woke up to her bedroom filling with smoke. She grabbed her two sons, sleeping in the same room, a 7-year-old and 15-month old, and tried opening the bedroom door to escape their second-floor apartment.
“Everything was on fire,” said Vega-Zamora. “There was not another way out.”
With the hallway blocked by fire and smoke, she closed the bedroom door and decided to tie a blanket to her boys and lower them down to ground level.
Her 7-year-old Jonathan got scared, so mom gave him a pep talk.
“I told him, ‘You have to be brave. You have to be brave,” said Vega-Zamora, “’We have to get out from here.’”
Neighbors were waiting below as Vega-Zamora lowered her boys down, wrapped in blankets. "And then she jumped," neighbors told firefighters.
They were treated for smoke inhalation, but all three survived.
Central Pierce Fire Captain Darrin Shaw credited Vega-Zamora’s quick-thinking, and the fact her bedroom door gave her more time to think.
“There’s a high probability that if that door was open, even cracked, they wouldn’t be there today,” said Shaw.
Shaw said closing doors are as important as smoke alarms and noted the smoke alarms in Vega-Zamora’s Puyallup apartment did not work.
He said the fire’s cause is still under investigation.
