RIGHT PLACE, RIGHT TIME

They Were There to Fight a Fire—and Saved a Drowning Kid

The 10-year-old boy staying in their hotel had no pulse.

A 10-year-old boy nearly drowned in a hotel pool in Redding, California, but was brought back to life by rescue crews who happened to be staying there while fighting the massive Dixie Fire. KRON reports that the firefighters and paramedics heard the child’s mom screaming, ran to help, and found the child was non-responsive. “He had water in the lungs and wasn’t breathing,” Oxnard Firefighter Brian Basso said in a video distributed by CAL Fire Butte Unit. “He had no pulse.” While they were performing CPR, the boy sat up and cried. The first responders’ work is far from done, though. The Dixie Fire has spread to nearly 200,000 acres, threatening thousands of homes and other structures.