‘I owe them everything.’ Kennewick father thanks firefighters for saving son

The relief in Richard Stith’s voice was obvious Thursday.

His 2-year-old son is breathing on his own, and the family was headed back to Kennewick after a harrowing two days in a Seattle hospital.

It could have been much worse. Their home caught fire Tuesday at the Garden Vista manufactured home park.

The credit goes to a closed door, a sleepy child and a team of Kennewick firefighters who raced inside to pull Dominic to safety and revive him.

“I owe them everything,” Stith said in a phone interview from Harborview Medical Center. “You don’t have to be a firefighter. They signed up to put their own lives on the line to help people.”

The four-man crew on Engine 1811 at Kennewick’s Fire Station 1 were just doing their job.

“If a civilian had gone in there or a police officer had gone in there and rescued him, that would have been heroic,” Kennewick fire Capt. Tim Harkins said. “We all love our job. We’re very passionate about it. We’re committed to the duty we see.”

The blaze started in the living room when Stith’s two older boys, ages 4 and 6, accidentally knocked a burning candle off a table.

The flames ignited a piece of paper, Stith said.

His wife, Melissa, was in the bathroom when she heard their black Lab barking and the older boys yelling.

The spreading flames cut her off from the toddler’s bedroom, trapping him as he napped.

She tried to put out the fire with water, flour, anything she could find — but it was burning too hot.

She rushed the older boys outside and yelled to neighbors about Dominic.

When she tried going back inside, the thick black smoke stopped her.

She and neighbors tried rushing to the back of the house, where they broke a window, but couldn’t get inside.

Fire crews were alerted as soon as they arrived about the trapped toddler. Harkins said that was critical because every 30 seconds a house fire can double in size.

Firefighter Tony Jorgensen immediately forced open the front door. Then, he and firefighter Mason Osborn pushed their way inside.

Jorgensen made his way to Dominic’s bedroom. He knew he was in the right place when he saw toys scattered across the floor.

“I started crawling over stuffed animals,” he said. “I was being very careful because I didn’t want to fall over the kid.”

He found Dominic in the crib, but he wasn’t breathing. He and Osborn carried the boy out to the lawn and started CPR.

Osborn said if Dominic had been stuck in the smoke for seconds more, he may not have survived.

“If a person stops breathing, it doesn’t take long before they’re past the point of resuscitation,” he said. “It’s possible the baby stopped breathing just as Tony was entering his room. There was probably a small window of time that he wasn’t breathing.”

Richard Stith, a disabled Army veteran and former member of the Oregon National Guard, was at the Circle K a few blocks away when he saw three police cars racing past him. He didn’t think much of it.

Then the fire truck flew by and he started to worry. He used to be a firefighter in Boardman, Ore.

He went through the sea of blinding emergency lights from police and fire trucks to find a crowd standing around his burning home.

He saw two of his kids outside. Then he saw two firefighters trying to breathe life back into his baby.

After Dominic was breathing again, the toddler and his mom were rushed to Trios Southridge Hospital. They later were flown to Harborview Medical Center.

Harkins credited divine intervention for saving the child’s life. Other crews members noted because Dominic was sleeping he wasn’t breathing in the smoky air as deeply. And the closed door to his room slowed the fire from reaching his room sooner.

Firefighters from another Kennewick station spent the night putting together an impromptu award for the crew.

The display is made up of a plastic dragon and Lego firefighters with a truck.

Inside the dragon’s mouth is a small figurine of a child.

“It was a really cool gesture,” Harkins said. “It meant a lot to me, coming from them.”

People wanting to help the family can make a donation to Richard Stith at any Numerica Credit Union location.

A YouCaring account was also set up to help the family at bit.ly/StithFamily.

This story was originally published November 9, 2017 at 8:03 PM with the headline "‘I owe them everything.’ Kennewick father thanks firefighters for saving son."