The New York City man severely injured while trying to rescue
his grandmother from a house fire Dec. 26 in Mount Jewett is
recovering with the help and support of his family, his father told
The Era on Thursday.
“We’re hoping to bring him home this weekend,” said Carlson’s
father, Bradford Area Alliance Executive Director Mike Glesk.
“We’ll take him home with us to Buffalo (N.Y.).”
Carl Carlson, 37, had been visiting his maternal grandmother,
Vivian Carlson, 94, at her Benson Lane home when, at about 3 a.m.
the morning after Christmas, a table-top candle with a Christmas
wreath base caught fire, setting the house ablaze.
“I got a phone call at 5 a.m.,” Glesk said, remembering the day
of the blaze, “the kind every parent fears.”
His son had been staying with him in Buffalo for the holidays,
and borrowed his dad’s car to drive to Mount Jewett to visit his
grandmother.
The first thing he did when he awoke to find the house ablaze
was to go get his grandmother, Glesk said. Carrying her, Carlson
ran to the front door. He put her down and opened the door and was
hit with a backdraft of air rushing in to feed the flames. He
hurriedly shut the door and kept searching for another way out.
There were windows along the front porch of the home, and
Carlson broke through one to escape from the blaze. And then,
already burned and injured from his ordeal, he did what few people
would have done – he went back inside again to rescue his
grandmother.
“When he got back in he looked for her,” Glesk said. “He
couldn’t find her. He realized if he didn’t get out, he wouldn’t
survive himself.”
But now, back inside the burning house, inhaling smoke and with
the surface of his eyes seared by the heat and flames, he couldn’t
find the way out that he’d already made – so he broke out through
another window, lacerating his head, face and arms in the
process.
Disoriented, burned and bleeding, Carlson decided he wanted to
get in his dad’s car and go get help.
“He thought he’d try to drive somewhere but realized he’d left
the keys in the house,” Glesk said. Instead, he looked up and saw a
neighbor had left his outdoor Christmas lights on and went there
for help.
“A state trooper told me ‘I’ve never seen anybody in that
condition still conscious,'” Glesk said, his voice swelling with
emotion, remarking on the courage his son displayed in the valiant
efforts to rescue his grandmother.
“I have enormous admiration for him,” he said. “We’re all so
incredibly proud of him.”
Carlson has been recovering from his injuries at Mercy Hospital
in Pittsburgh.
“We’re very encouraged. Within a day we knew his survival was
OK.”
His health is rebounding, but the treatments are difficult.
“The treatment for burn victims is absolutely excruciating,”
Glesk said with a tremor in his voice. “I take him into the
treatment room and he comes out shuddering.”
Carlson has burns over 15 percent of his body, mostly on his
hands and his head, from the neck up.
“His face, head and neck seem to be doing quite well,” Glesk
said. “We’re not sure about one of his hands.”
After he returns to Buffalo with his father, Carlson will
continue treatments at hospitals there.
And his family is working to help him through another difficult
part of recovery – survivor’s guilt – something that his father, a
Vietnam veteran, understands.
“He was feeling guilty that he didn’t get his grandmother out,”
Glesk said. “He just felt intensive guilt at first because of
that.
“We keep saying ‘how many people would run back into a burning
building to try to save their grandmother?’ I have enormous
admiration for him,” Glesk said.
Firefighters who responded to the blaze credited Carlson with
providing key information to help investigators determine the cause
of the blaze. Still conscious when paramedics were removing him
from the scene, Carlson told them the Christmas wreath caught
fire.
The fire was ruled accidental in nature.
