"We knocked OK, we banged on the door till Fred and his sister answered it," Hector said, gulping hard for breath. "I saw the smoke from the back of my house," the 13-year-old said, "and I ran right over."

As soon as Fred opened the door, 13-year-old Akeem shouted "Fire!" in his face. Instead of racing out of the burning building, however, Fred and his sister turned and ran inside to tell their mother and another relative.

Nobody was getting out. Now the flames were shooting through the roof. And a power line connected to the house melted and separated from the building, landing against a fence in the front yard.

At this point, Hector's father, Nelson Burgos, who had a party in full swing a few doors away for his other son, ran over to Brown's house.

"I saw the flames all over the place and I ran inside. I told her, 'you've gotta get' " out, said Burgos, who has lived up the block from the Browns for the past seven years. "She was just crying, crying."

Luis Calderon, another neighbor, ran inside the house with Burgos to convince Brown to get out.

"She came out barefoot, but she wanted to go back for her sandals," Calderon said. When someone remarked that he risked his life to save the family, Calderon appeared surprised.

"I'd do it again for anybody — in a heartbeat. They're a family, you know," Calderon said. "I'm no hero. I just, we just, went in and took them out. That's all."

Thirty-five Bridgeport firefighters trained hoses on the house for 45 minutes to put the fire out. "It's too soon to say what set this fire off," Assistant Fire Chief Dominick Carfi said as he watched the building for signs of smoldering fire. The second-story sustained heavy fire and smoke damage.

"There was never a chance that this would spread to the other houses" even though they are close to one another, Carfi said. "We got this under control."