WASHINGTON — In the 75 years that WUSA9 has spent trying to inform, inspire and impact our community, we’ve covered far too many tragedies.
But sometimes in the midst of disaster, we’ve found miracles.
In a devastating house fire on Missouri Avenue in 1988, two people died, but firefighters were able to resuscitate two young children, and one has grow up carrying a fire safety message that's saved countless lives.
If not for the heroism of some D.C. firefighters, Jackie Kotei wouldn’t be alive, wouldn’t have her four beautiful children, wouldn’t have grown up serving her community.
Thirty-six years ago, fire ripped through her grandmother’s house. The late WUSA9 photographer Sheldon Levy captured stunning video of rescuers doing CPR on Jackie, 6, Gwendolyn, 4, and Ronald Hansberry, 2; Jackie and Gwendolyn were sisters and Ronald their cousin.
Levy had to argue with a DC Police officer who was trying to push him back. The firefighters were doing heroic work, he told the officer, and he was just trying to capture it.
Smoke from a blaze in the basement of the rowhouse had stopped the children's hearts and shut down their lungs.
“Did you think they were alive or no?” the late anchor/reporter Bruce Johnson asked one of the rescuers. “Honestly, no. I felt no movement in them whatsoever,” he responded.
The first firefighter inside spotted teddy bears in one bedroom and went into the room looking for the trapped children. But they weren't in there. And when he came out looking for the next bedroom, the fire flashed over and he had to get out.
Another firefighter climbed a ladder and went into the pitch black bedroom while his captain screamed from the window so he could keep his bearings. He found Jackie first and handed her out the window.
Before our very eyes on the roof over the front porch, paramedic Wilmer Scott literally breathed life back into Jackie.
“When the firefighter handed me the child, that was my child,” Scott said later that day. “Did you ever think or say to yourself that you might not be able to save that child?” Bruce Johnson asked him. “No, I never think about that until after,” Scott replied. "Because if I get a negative thought in my head, then I've lost the race."
"Everyone said I was not able to be resuscitated. Yet he thought, ‘No she can!’" said Kotei, sitting in her Frederick townhome recently, surrounded by her children. “He didn’t give up, and that to me gave me a second chance at life.”
“When she finally took that one breath, that’s all I needed. I said, I’ve got this one,” Scott said after the fire.
The miracles were far from over. Firefighters rescued Ronald too, restarting his respiration as his grandmother watched.
"She was screaming, there’s one more, there’s one more," said Kotei's mother, Joyce Hansberry last month. "But they couldn’t find her. And that was Gwendolyn."
They finally found "Gwenie" briefly restarted her heart, but she passed away later at the hospital.
“The hardest thing I’ve ever had to do was tell Jacqueline what happened to her youngest sister," said her father, Curtis Cutler. "And she cried and she shivered. And I thought I was going to lose her emotionally.”
“For many years I carried a lot of guilt. Because I remember telling my sister, ‘It’s OK, just lay back down,'” Kotei said. She finally put that to rest by focusing on being open and helping others.
Former WUSA9 reporter Dave Statter was among the first on the scene and says the story had a huge impact on the community.
"People are astounded by the video they’re seeing on their TV sets, that these kids are brought out, and then to hear there are two survivors, there’s great joy," Statter said.
Kotei’s convinced her family’s story encouraged a lot of other families to do more to protect themselves.
"If there was a smoke detector there, we would have known while the fire was still in the basement that we needed to get out. That definitely would have saved Gwendolyn," she said.
Paramedic Wilmer Scott died years later of lung disease.
Kotei grew up and for several years carried the fire safety message at the Howard County Fire Department.
Statter said he will always remember Jackie Kotei and the miracle on Missouri Avenue.
“It’s really a high point of my life to have met her and to see her today as this beautiful mother, taking care of her own kids. Because she knows it can all be over in a matter of seconds," he said.
Kotei said, “I am so grateful that video was captured and that that video was shown and continues to be shown."