By David Snyder
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, February 7, 2005; Page B02

Pablo Steneri, 17, was walking the family cocker spaniel, Hunny, about noon yesterday in his Bethesda neighborhood when he heard muffled screams coming from . . . well, it was hard to tell at first.

"Help me! My kitchen's burning!"

The woman's voice was loud enough that Steneri knew it was urgent. But where was she?

"Help!" Steneri heard the voice again. "My kitchen!"

The voice continued, so Steneri sped up his walk on Cindy Lane and followed the sound to a two-story colonial, the home of Elizabeth Nisos, 79.

There was no smoke outside, but Steneri heard the voice again -- "Help!" -- so he barged through the front door.

Hunny waited patiently on the lawn outside.

Once inside, "you could immediately feel the heat," said Steneri, who found Nisos throwing water on rapidly growing flames, which were beginning to leap from the kitchen and toward the front door.

"We need to get out," Steneri recalled telling Nisos as he moved toward her. She was reluctant to leave.

He urged her again, he said, and when she was still reluctant, he grabbed her arms and pulled her out of the house to safety.

"She was pretty upset" about the fire, Steneri said yesterday in an interview.

His action might well have saved Nisos's life, said Pete Piringer, a Montgomery County fire and rescue spokesman.

"A lot of times, people just don't get involved," Piringer said. "But he was a neighbor and he got right into the thick of it and he did the right thing -- he got her right out of there."

Steneri's actions "resulted in [Nisos] not getting hurt or killed," Piringer said.

Once outside, Steneri said, it was mere moments before smoke was pouring from the windows of Nisos's home, where authorities said she has lived for decades.

"Smoke was coming out through all the windows, and you could hear the glass from the windows cracking and breaking," said Steneri, a senior at Winston Churchill High School in Potomac. "It was a matter of minutes before the whole house was pretty much in flames."

Steneri flagged down motorist Ron Sloan, who called 911 from his cell phone. The fire department arrived a few minutes later.

Piringer called the fire "devastating" and said that investigators estimated the damage to the house at about $250,000.

The house's smoke alarms were not functioning, Piringer said.

Nisos and Steneri were not hurt.

Red Cross workers arranged a place for Nisos to stay, Piringer said.

Nisos told firefighters that she put a roast in the oven yesterday morning, then went about her business.

She told Steneri she thought the oven had malfunctioned, he said.

Steneri said he has applied to the University of Maryland at College Park and might attend there in the fall. Piringer, though, said he has a different idea.

"I told him he should be a firefighter," Piringer said. "We'll make sure to get him an application."