Quick-thinking 911 telecommunicator saves woman from house fire
January 30 was like any other day for Cierra Matthews—which is to say, a whirlwind of the unexpected.
Matthews is a 911 telecommunicator for the city of Freeport and a member of AFSCME Local 3367. Her family has a long and proud history in law enforcement, and her role as a telecommunicator continues the family tradition.
When she clocks in, she never knows what will come her way. The calls she receives on an average day range from the mundane (“I locked my keys in my car”) to the deadly serious (“I’m trapped inside a burning house”).
Jan. 30 was going to be the latter.
Late in the afternoon, one of her partners took a call regarding a house on fire. With more calls rolling in from neighbors, dispatchers quickly learned that not one but two adjacent houses were ablaze. Even so, no one had reason to believe anyone was in danger.
Then Matthews’ phone rang.
“Ayúdame, ayúdame,” a voice said. It’s a woman pleading in Spanish: Help me.
“At that point, I locked in,” Matthews remembers. “I realized that this was life or death.”
Matthews immediately got a translator on the line and learned that the woman was on the second floor of one of the houses. She was panicking.
Matthews relied on her training. She urged the woman to calm down, wrap a shirt over her face to lessen smoke inhalation, and get low to the ground.
It had been only seconds since Matthews received the call, but already, time was running out. The first floor of the house was fully engulfed in flames; if the second floor was consumed, firefighters won’t be able to reach the woman until it’s too late.
Matthews knew the woman had only one way out: To survive, she had to jump from the second-floor window —and that’s what Matthews urged her to do.
The woman jumped. She landed between the two burning houses, injured but alive. Firefighters rushed in and pulled her to safety.
All told, the call lasted less than two minutes. A first responder on the scene later told Matthews that if the caller hadn’t jumped, there was no way she would have survived.
For her lifesaving actions, Matthews was given a commendation by the city.
“It wasn’t just a voice on the phone. This was a woman. This was someone’s daughter, sister, possibly mother,” Matthews said. “It feels good, but I was just doing my job.”
Matthews (second from left) receives a commendation from city leaders.