BY CHRISTINE GRIMALDI
Staff Writer
CHRISTINE GRIMALDI Desiree Rittman and her daughter, Allie Wilson, 11, sit outside their Jamesburg ranch Tuesday. The Borough Council recently commended Allie for saving her mother and their home from a grease fire in March. JAMESBURG – Desiree Rittman could not hear the warning peals as her smoke detectors were set off by thick billows from a grease fire.
She instead awoke to her daughter, Diane “Allie” Wilson, pounding on her back door.
Rather than run for her own safety, Allie, 11, ran past the smoldering kitchen, singeing her leg, falling to the floor, to save her mother from the heat and smoke.
Rittman had always instructed Allie and her son, Michael, 17, to save themselves first in the event of such an emergency.
“If she would have done as I said though, I probably would have been dead,” Rittman said.
For her bravery, Allie is now being recognized as a hero. The fifth-grader was publicly recognized by the borough of Jamesburg, Mayor Anthony LaMantia, the Jamesburg Volunteer Fire Department, and fire official and Emergency Management Coordinator Brian Wright during a June Borough Council meeting. She received a plaque that she now proudly displays in her still-standing home.
The fire took place in the early hours of a morning in the last week of March. Rittman’s husband, Earl Wilson, was working that night; he is the chief of Jamesburg’s EMT services, a Jamesburg volunteer firefighter, and a part-time Spotswood EMT.
Rittman said her son and a friend had been cooking in the kitchen and fell asleep in the adjacent room while the food continued to fry.
Rittman’s Pomeranian had just given birth, and she had sealed herself in the back portion of her bilevel ranch with the dog, her Pomeranian mate, and the three puppies.
There was a fire detector right inside that doorway, but no smoke reached it because the door was closed.
“So my alarm itself never went off,” she said.
Around 2 a.m., the three fire alarms in the front of the house sounded.
Her son and his friend were so deeply asleep that they did not hear the alarms.
Allie woke up coughing and thought her mother was in the room with her.
She was not there.
“I wanted to wake her up to make sure that she would do something, like call somebody,” Allie said. She ran down the hallway to alert Rittman, even though she had to pass the burning kitchen.
Rittman heard her daughter fall to the floor.
“She got up and she just pushed herself against the door,” Rittman said. “Literally threw herself at the door, bang, she yelled fire and then she just ran out of the house.”
Rittman woke up her son and his friend, who dropped to the floor and crawled back onto the couch as she went to extinguish the fire and call 911. Police officers roused the boy when they arrived.
Rittman had yanked the scorching pan off the stove, incurring third-degree burns on her hand.
Rittman’s burn was the most serious injury. The fire had singed Allie’s leg, and everyone suffered some degree of smoke inhalation, particularly Allie.
“Underneath our noses were completely black,” Rittman said.
Rittman refused oxygen treatment so she could attend to Allie at the hospital.
The family pets all survived. Several cabinets, doors and appliances in the kitchen needed to be replaced.
“I say it was a blessing from God, really,” Rittman said. She noted that the fire produced more smoke than flames. The flames somehow did not penetrate the ceiling directly above the stove, which is the spot in the attic where Rittman and her husband store boxes filled with Christmas tissue and wrapping paper.
“That’s a cinder box,” she said. “In another five minutes my whole house would have been gone, there’s no doubt about it.”
She credits her daughter for her bravery.
Rittman said Allie was very nervous at the council meeting before receiving her award.
“All that even makes me wonder more, what do you think she was thinking? I don’t know … I’m sure she was just freaking out. My first thought would also be to get everybody out, although as an adult I only wanted her to think, ‘You do what you got to do and you be safe.’ That to me I think would be heart-wrenching for her to even think of making a decision like that.”