George L. McCullough saved Cheryel R. and Charlene A. Taillon, and Sharon T. Taillon from suffocation, Lancaster, Ontario, October 5, 1962. At night an oil-heating stove in the kitchen of a two-story frame dwelling caught fire while one-year-old twins Cheryel and Charlene, Sharon, 3, and their sister were asleep in the second-floor bedrooms. Their father and five-year-old brother were awakened in the living room and left the dwelling as the flames spread to the floor and the wall. A police constable arrived, followed soon afterward by McCullough, 38, apprentice plumber. The constable used a fire extinguisher to reduce the flames sufficiently to allow passage from the door to the stairway. He continued spraying the flames as McCullough, followed by the father, ascended to the second floor, which was filled with dense smoke. Holding his breath, McCullough groped his way in the first bedroom and reached a bassinet in which Cheryel and Charlene were sleeping. He then was forced to breathe and began to cough. He carried the twins to the stairway and thence from the dwelling. McCullough then returned to the second floor. Again holding his breath, he made his way into the second bedroom and dimly saw the glow from the stove’s metal chimney, which was red hot and rose through an opening in the floor a foot from Sharon’s crib. McCullough reached the crib and then was forced to inhale. Coughing violently, he carried Sharon to the stairway. The father, who meanwhile had removed his other daughter from her crib, then placed a hand on McCullough’s shoulder and followed him down the stairs. By that time the constable nearly had exhausted the extinguisher, but gusts of flames still extended almost to the kitchen door. McCullough passed within inches of the flames as he carried Sharon out of the dwelling. At the bottom of the stairs the father started to collapse. The constable dragged the father, who still held his daughter, from the dwelling. Firemen arrived and put out the flames.
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