Amid Debris of Blaze, Father Grateful to Hero

It wasn't in Willie Powell's nature to just drive on by.

Employed as a warehouse worker but trained as a nurse's assistant, Powell, 44, came upon flames shooting from a window Sunday afternoon in the Brentwood neighborhood of Prince George's County. He did what his profession had conditioned him to do: He helped.

Rushing from his car, he pounded on the front door of 4003 Volta Ave. A teenager answered.

"Young man, your air conditioner is on fire!" Powell told 14-year-old Ricardo Quinteros.

Ricardo stepped outside, looked up and saw flames shooting from a bedroom window.

Within minutes, Ricardo, three siblings, a cousin and Ricardo's father, who had been sleeping upstairs, were safely outside -- and grateful.

"He probably saved my life and my family's life, too, my kids," the father, Juan Carlos Hernandez, said of Powell yesterday. "I appreciate that."

As he spoke, the stench of smoke still lingered on the narrow street off Rhode Island Avenue, where family members attempted to salvage what they could from the scorched second floor and a pile of debris in front of the house.

A damaged mattress sat propped up against the home. Charred dresser drawers lay strewn across the lawn. Clothes were scattered.

In the bedroom where the fire apparently began, everything was burned and blackened. The floor was still moist from the effort to extinguish the fire, which appeared to have spread from a window-mounted air-conditioning unit.

"It was a lot of fire," said Hernandez, 34. "It was going up the ceiling and into the closets."

Bear, one of the family's four dogs, died in the fire. He had been asleep with Hernandez when it started.

On Sunday, Mark Brady, a spokesman for the Prince George's fire department, hailed Powell as a good Samaritan who acted "without hesitation or fear of his own safety."

The fire started about 2:30 p.m., six hours after Hernandez returned home from his second job, as a waiter at a nightclub in the District. Also home were Ricardo and the other children: Ana Isabel, 13, Juan Carlos Jr., 6, Kimberli, 4, and their cousin, Johanna, 13.

The precise chronology of how the family members escaped once Powell alerted them remains murky. Hernandez said he was awakened first by his daughter Ana. Powell, a Temple Hills resident, said he found Hernandez asleep.

For now, the family will live with relatives in Laurel. With the damage largely confined to the upper floor, they hope to one day return to the house.

Powell, who lives in Temple Hills, said he didn't linger long at the scene but returned a little later and spoke to fire officials.

"I look it at this way: The good Lord put me there at the right time," Powell said. "I think it was the smart thing and the right thing to do. You never know when you're going to need help in this lifetime."