Young hero saves the day
Published: March 13, 2007
Anondo “Binji” Mukherjee, 16, spent much of last Saturday sledding and playing soccer. Afterward, some friends came over to play video games, watch movies and spend the night at his family’s house near Ellis Hollow.
Binji couldn’t know that a few hours later, he and his friend, Jed Glosenger, would be trying to rescue his family and friends from a house fire. All eight people in the house — including Binji, the three friends who were staying overnight, Binji’s grandparents, brother and father — safely escaped from the fire early last Sunday morning in the Town of Dryden, partly thanks to the brave teen.
“It was a little scary, but I was relieved to know everyone was OK,” Binji said.
As his grandparents and 13-year-old brother, Alok Mukherjee, ran down the stairs ahead of them, Binji helped his father down the stairs.
Binji’s father, Cornell Engineering Professor Subrata Mukherjee, 62, caught polio as a 20-year-old undergraduate in Calcutta, India, where he grew up.
“I got out just in time. As you can see, I walk slowly,” Subrata Mukherjee said. Binji held his father’s hand, walking down the stairs from their bedrooms.
Binji’s mother, Yu Mukherjee, said she was proud of how her son helped her father and friend.
An engineer, she had been working in San Jose since November and wasn’t home at the time of the fire, although she flew in the next day to be with her family for a week. She had been home the previous week, but left the Monday before the fire.
Binji’s friend Madeline “Maddie” Brumberg, 16, was sleeping in a guest room near the other bedrooms in the house. She said she heard Binji’s maternal grandfather yelling from the hallway, but felt the bedroom door was too hot to open. She said she climbed out the second-floor window and hung from the sill for a minute.
Glosenger, who’d been sleeping in the basement, had awakened to heavy smoke and escaped by feeling along the walls until he found the stairs. Brumberg said Glosenger tried to break her fall, but didn’t actually catch her. She brushed him on the way down, and neither was injured, she said. Glosenger also had his cell phone in his pocket and called 911.
Once out, the group realized that their friend, Elie Kommel, 17, was missing. While Glosenger was going through another door, Binji went back into the burning house.
“He said he had to go in,” Subrata Mukherjee said.
Kommel said he’d awakened in the finished basement where he and Glosenger had been sleeping, unaware of a fire, and went upstairs to the first floor to use a bathroom.
“When I was in the bathroom, I noticed the smoke,” Kommel said.
The fire hit suddenly.
“I turned on the fan and tried to open the door to go out, and as soon I opened the door, my hair was crackling, and it was so hot out there. I closed the door and put wet paper towels over the door. I waited there and came to a point where I couldn’t breathe anymore, so I got down on the ground, and there was some air,” he said.
Binji’s hair was also singed, leading to his new crew cut, and he had minor burns on his hands.
“I was lying down for about five minutes, and I could hear everyone else outside, and I started yelling at them and they started yelling back,” Kommel said.
“My friends started in, and couldn’t make it. After they tried, a piece of the ceiling started coming down, so I put my shirt over my face and ran. I was running in the wrong direction. And my friend Binji’s grandmother shouted,” he said. He ran in the direction of her voice.
Binji’s maternal grandmother, Yulan Jia, and grandfather, Ronquan Xie, both 72, who live with the family, speaks Mandarin and very little English, the Mukherjees reported.
But despite language differences, there was no barrier. Kommel understood his friend’s grandmother.
“I could see her going out the door, yelling in Chinese,” he said.
The house collapsed 20 seconds after he got out.
“It was a pretty close call,” Kommel said.
Kommel, Binji and Subrata Mukherjee were taken to Syracuse University Hospital, the others to Cayuga Medical Center and all were released a few hours later. Binji was back at Ithaca High School Monday. Kommel stayed home Monday, Tuesday was a snow day, and he was back in school Wednesday.
Glosenger’s father, Dr. Mark Glosenger, is an emergency room doctor and has seen a lot. Sunday morning he met his son at the Cayuga Medical Center, one of his employers.
“I’m used to working with burn victims and he looked like he’d been through a war,” Mark Glosenger said, but he was relieved to find his son was not seriously injured.
Even the pets got out, except for the fish in the family’s tank. Gou Gou, a Dalmatian-Beagle, was found right away. Mimi the cat was initially missing. When Subrata Mukherjee returned Monday, he found the cat, who had survived despite the fire and bitter cold overnight.
Where it could have been a tragedy, it’s only an inconvenience, said Subrata Mukherjee. He said that friends and family had been extremely helpful, and he figures help will continue as they move into an apartment and later, another house.
The family has stayed with friends and at the Ramada Inn this week.
Binji’s fencing gear was in the car, although Alok’s was lost in the fire. The teens’ cell phones, iPods and more sentimental things — like long letters that Binji’s parents wrote to each other after meeting when his dad was on a speaking tour of China — were lost in the fire. Subrata Mukherjee lost tax records he was about to hand to his accountant.
Subrata Mukherjee said they are not sure how the fire started, but think it started in the basement and may have been electrical.
The Mukherjees said they feel extremely lucky.
“Everyone’s been very nice at school and at work for my father,” Binji said.
“It’s one of the benefits of living in a small town,” Subrata Mukherjee said.
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