October 2002 Volume 83 Number 10 "serving the protectors"
Minutes from a fiery death
By Brett Williams

Without the bravery of two SA cops in a house fire early this year, one woman would have lost her life.

Sam Bailetti threw his body on the line when he crashed hip-and-shoulder style into the front door of a burning Glenelg North home last February. Not even his fear that a raging fireball might have engulfed him when the door flung open was enough to stop him.

He and his partner, Jade Hylton, had only one goal: to rescue the elderly woman who they believed to be in the house and unable to escape. So, each drew a deep breath and charged in through the now clear doorway.

But, once inside, the two could not – for thick black smoke that filled the entire house – see more than two metres in front of them.

Undeterred, they began a desperate search for the woman. But, unbeknown to the two young cops, she could survive only minutes more before dying a horror movie-like fire death.

The two officers – the first of any emergency-services crews on the scene – had responded to the fire only moments earlier, at around 8am. They smelt smoke from the moment they turned into the street, and then saw it (smoke) billowing out of the roof of the burning brick bungalow.

“The air inside was that hot that it had burnt all the inside of her lungs. I thought she was going to go any second.”

A set of Venetian blinds and the clasps by which they hung had melted inside a front window and fallen to the ground.

With his baton, Bailetti, then 23, tried to prise open a locked front security-screen door. He found it would not budge, so Hylton, 21, cut the door’s wire screen with a knife from her gun belt. She then felt inside the door, which she was able to open with a key she discovered in the lock. Says Bailetti: “We tried pushing the main door open, but there was a chain (attached) and we couldn’t get it open, so I just hip-and-shouldered it through. “As soon as I did that, it was like when you open an oven and it’s 250 degrees – it just wafts in your face. Well, this was like that, but over your whole body. It just wafted straight out.” In the face of searing heat and deathly smoke, Bailetti entered the house as Hylton followed closely behind him. The pair had, to this stage, seen no flames and so did not where the fire might be raging.

Jade Hylton: “It was the grossest thing I’ve ever seen.”

Crouching as low as they could, and able only to take shallow breaths, the officers began to search along a hallway. Luckily, they soon heard the woman moaning. They moved toward the sound, which they believed to be at the other end of the hallway. And, within a moment, that was exactly where the pair found her.

“Her face was bubbling, as were her hands,” says Hylton. “They were just blistering. I’ve never seen anything like it. She was cooking, just like when you’re cooking a chicken and you hear it bubbling away. It was the grossest thing I’ve ever seen.”

The woman’s dog, a Jack Russell terrier, had died next to her. And Bailetti, who saw that the woman was only semi-conscious, was not confident she could survive either. “The air inside was that hot,” he says, “that it had burnt all the inside of her lungs. She was foaming black (fluid) at the mouth and her eyes were rolling. I thought she was going to go any second.” The officers, themselves struggling to breathe, now had to move the heavily-built woman to safety. So as not to drag her, the officers grabbed her arms and ankles and carried her to the safety of the outdoors and fresh air. Even by then, no other emergency services had arrived. Hylton secured the woman on her side on the ground, as Bailetti relayed information to the police communications centre.

Sam Bailetti: “...it was like when you open an oven and it’s 250 degrees...”

When fire-fighters arrived a minute later, they doused the fire and set up industrial fans that cleared the house of smoke. Ambulance officers soon took the woman into their care and rushed her to hospital.

Bailetti and Hylton went back inside the house to see the extent of the fire’s fury. “The whole interior was gutted,” says Hylton. “The heat had warped pictures and the paint was blistered.”

As well, the fire had reduced most of the furniture to piles of ashes. Only the home’s basic structure had remained standing. Investigators found the fire cause to be an electrical fault.

The officers checked on the woman’s condition later that day at the Royal Adelaide Hospital. There, she lay in an induced coma; and hospital staff suggested that, had the officers not rescued her, she would have died within minutes.

Some weeks later, she had made a full recovery. Says Bailetti: “If she hadn’t made it, it would have been a real empty feeling.”

Both officers inhaled smoke through the rescue, and Bailetti ended up with glass in his eye from the door he smashed open. Fortunately, the glass washed out and caused no lasting injury.

Neither officer felt his or her actions were heroic. “I think any other copper faced with the same situation would do the exact same thing,” says Bailetti.

But, in July, SAPOL awarded Bailetti and Hylton certificates of commendation for their actions. Both say they were proud to receive them, and would never hesitate to repeat their actions.

“Even if the conditions were worse than they were,” says Hylton, “we’d do it again. When you’re talking about human life, you can’t justify not going in.”

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