Joseph F. Mello III

Joseph F. Mello III rescued Joseph Mello Jr. from burning, Ipswich, Massachusetts, August 18, 2025. Mello, 77, who used a walker while recovering from back surgery, was trapped in his second-floor bedroom when a fire broke out in the rear of the first floor and spread to the second-floor rear and the roof. His son Joseph, 56, business owner, was stepping into the shower in his house across the driveway when he heard someone shouting about a fire. He ran outside, barefoot and in his bathrobe, and saw smoke pouring from the roof of his father’s house near the chimney. Joseph ran into the house through the front door, then upstairs and down the hallway through thick smoke to his father’s bedroom. Joseph helped his father to his walker, then ran into a bathroom to wet towels for himself and his father to help them breathe. They moved down the hallway toward the stairs, which were filled with dense smoke. Joseph feared his father’s electric chairlift in the staircase might not work and that the smoke on the stairway was too thick, so he guided him into a rear bedroom and opened the window as firefighters arrived. Joseph called for a ladder as his father crawled onto the bed under the window. Firefighters placed a ladder to the window and a firefighter entered. Joseph and the firefighter helped Mello onto the ladder and firefighters lowered him to the ground, after which Joseph descended the ladder himself. Mello was hospitalized for smoke inhalation, cuts, and abrasions, and he recovered. Joseph suffered from smoke inhalation and abrasions but declined medical treatment. After a few weeks of coughing, he recovered.

2025-0000295-10568