“Honestly, I don’t feel like I deserve an award. We were just doing our jobs,” Lopez said. “We don’t want to be firefighters to get awards or get interviewed or be on the news, it’s to help people.”
Bloom agreed with Lopez, saying, “It’s a great honor that we are getting this award, but what we did that is what I’d hope anybody would do in a situation like that on the job.”
Bloom and Lopez were honored Wednesday with the Fire Service Valor Award by the Ohio Department of Commerce Division of State Fire Marshal and Ohio Department of Public Safety Division of EMS at the 43rd annual Ohio Fire Service Hall of Fame & Fire Awards ceremony. The event happens each year to honor those who have gone above and beyond the call of duty.
That day, crews were dispatched to an apartment complex at 1037 E. Home Road on a report of a gas leak. Bloom, Lopez, Collin Downing, Ross Angelo and Isaiah Johnson all responded to the incident.
Lopez and Bloom described that day in a recent video on the Department of Commerce’s YouTube page, which started off with the 911 caller saying, “Our apartment complex has a really bad gas leak. You can hear it coming from the thing.”
The two said dispatch said the caller could smell and hear the gas, and people were trying to evacuate the building.
“We haven’t even put the engine in park yet, we were still moving,” Lopez said.
“We’re starting to slow down, and I remember looking towards the apartments and I was getting on the radio, giving my size up ... and in the middle of my size up ... ” Bloom said, as the video plays the 911 call where you can hear the explosion and someone screaming, “Get out, get out.”
“And I looked over again and realized the apartment had exploded,” Bloom said.
Shortly after the explosion, two adults, both women and Haitian immigrants, exited the rubble with severe injuries, and one of the victim’s clothes were still burning.
That’s when Engine 7 told dispatch they had heavy damage to the apartment with flames and needed more medics and engines.
Lopez said that’s when he saw debris bouncing off the windows, and when Bloom got out of the engine, he could hear the baby screaming.
“I don’t make it to even probably the front of the engine before I hear, ‘My baby, my baby,’ so it now changes from a fire situation to more of a rescue,” Lopez said, explaining the baby’s crib was on the second story against the wall and around the edge of the open floor after the wall was blown out.
Bloom said he walked to the front, found Lopez and told them to mask up and enter the house to rescue the baby.
Battalion Chief Dan Faust said you could watch the two firefighters the entire time, because of the wall collapse, and seeing them gave others the ability to throw water from that side of the building to help keep the flames from growing.
Lopez said he made it to the crib, but there was “no baby there, just a pile of debris.” Bloom then told him to dig in the crib.
“I start digging and eventually the baby’s laying in there, looks right up at me, I just pick the baby up and we got out of there,” he said. “I’m just thankful we were there quick enough, there at the right time to make sure that baby was able to survive.”
The then 11-month-old girl suffered burns but was released from the hospital later that month. The baby’s mother, Macdala Ducatel, 39, died on April 15, and Ducatel’s sister, Edeline Ducatel, on April 10.
Bloom said he heard the baby is living with family in Florida.
The two also thanked the fire crew that was with them that day.
“We’re getting the awards, but the rest of our crew, they all did great too ... We couldn’t have done it without them,” Lopez said.
“Without our crew, we would’ve been nowhere,” Bloom said.
Bloom and Lopez were also awarded Springfield’s Medal of Valor, the fire division’s highest honor, with Downing, Angelo and Johnson being awarded with the Meritorious Service Medal, for risking their lives. The awards were part of Clark State College and the Springfield Fire Rescue Division’s fire academy graduation ceremony earlier this year.
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