THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Saturday, January 28, 1995 TAG: 9501280211
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY LARRY W. BROWN, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: PORTSMOUTH LENGTH: Medium: 69 lines
One minute, Lonnie Blow was grading exams before classes began at Emily Spong Center. The next, he was crawling face-down through a burning house across the street, searching in the smoky darkness for a 3-year-old girl.
``I didn't think about it at the time,'' said the 35-year-old social studies teacher. ``I just thought we didn't have time for 911 or anybody.''
Early Thursday, the teacher heard a school security officer yell, ``Mr. Blow, a house is on fire!''
Blow ran outside and saw smoke pouring from every window of the house. Then a woman staggered out, covered in soot. She opened her mouth and out came black smoke.
``She was saying, `My baby, please save my baby,' '' Blow said.
The teacher climbed the front steps and cracked the door. He felt a blast of heat and smoke, so he held his breath, dropped to the floor and began pushing himself along inside the house.
``The smoke was just rolling through the house,'' he said Friday. ``I couldn't see anything, but I heard the baby crying from my right side.''
By that time, Blow said he had to take a breath. ``Smoke went up my nose and down my throat and cut my wind off,'' he said. ``I thought, `Am I going to die in this house?' ''
Blow continued his blind search for the terrified child. He found her curled up on the floor in what he thinks was a bedroom. He laid the child over one shoulder and crawled back to the front door.
Peggy Milton, the woman Blow had seen staggering from the house, was standing there. She thanked Blow for saving her daughter, Majeekah.
The teacher took a deep breath of fresh air, but so much smoke had seeped into his lungs, he felt terrible. ``I was in pretty bad shape.''
Fire officials later told Blow that he was still alive because he hugged the floor inside the burning building in the 2200 block of Piedmont Ave.
``They said if I stood up I probably would have died instantly,'' he said. ``The heat would have singed my lungs.''
When the rescue was over, students and teachers crowded around Blow, the mother and child and firefighters.
Peggy Milton was listed in stable condition Friday at Sentara Norfolk General Hospital, where she was treated for smoke inhalation. Majeekah was in serious condition at the Children's Hospital of the King's Daughters. She also was treated for smoke inhalation.
Officials said the cause of the fire, which mainly left smoke damage to the one-story, two-bedroom frame house, was not known.
Blow, who also is an assistant basketball coach at Maury High School and a Norfolk Detention Center counselor, said he will not search for life-threatening missions of mercy. ``But I'm going to do what I can.''
But Blow is - at least for now - typecast as someone very special at Emily Spong Center. On Friday, he answered this page on the school intercom: ``Would The Hero come to the front office?'' ILLUSTRATION: BETH BERGMAN/Staff
[Color Photo]
``I couldn't see anything . . . ''
Lonnie Blow, a 35-year-old social studies teacher at Emily Spong
Center in Portsmouth, poses outside the home in the 2200 block of
Piedmont Ave. where he rescued a 3-year-old child Thursday. ``I
didn't think about it at the time,'' Blow said Friday.
KEYWORDS: FIRE RESCUE INJURIES by CNB