A retired Marine plunged into a blazing, smoke-filled church parking garage in search of victims of a fire that sent two people to the hospital last Friday.
Torrance resident Dave McCarthy, 53, was waiting for his twin boys to finish basketball practice at American Martyrs Catholic School, 1701 Laurel Ave. when he smelled smoke coming from a nearby parking lot at American Martyrs Church.
McCarthy, a retired U.S. Marine Corps lieutenant colonel, ran to the lot shortly before 1:45 p.m. and saw black smoke billowing out of an underground parking structure. He crawled down the garage’s stairs in search of victims after a worker yelled that someone was trapped.
“There was smoke from the floor to the ceiling,” McCarthy said. “I couldn’t see my hand in front of my face. There was one inch of visibility.”
McCarthy searched and shouted for trapped victims. After a minute, he came back up and asked a church employee for a fire extinguisher and to call 911.
McCarthy crawled down into the garage for a second time but found no one.
“Then I started to lose it from the inhalation,” he said. “I could see the flames. I had the extinguisher and crawled around.”
Ten firefighting units from Manhattan Beach and Hermosa Beach fire departments responded to the scene within minutes, by which time fire sprinklers had extinguished the blaze.
MBFD Battalion Chief John Weber said that the fire was caused by a welder who had been working in a storage area full of cardboard and plastic boxes which caught ablaze.
“When I got there, Dave was standing at the top of the stairwell with a fire extinguisher that had been used, coughing and yelling,” Weber said.
“Oh God, it was awful,” McCarthy recalled. “There were all kinds of materials burning. My eyes were burning. My throat was burning. You could feel the heat from the fire.”
McCarthy and the welder, a 45-year-old man, had both separately exited the parking garage and were coughing badly by the time firefighters arrived. Responders checked to make sure the blaze was extinguished and that no one was in the structure.
Rescue teams treated both men for smoke inhalation and transported them to Little Company of Mary Hospital. Neither suffered burns.
Weber said no serious damage was caused to the parking garage.
McCarthy is a parishioner, usher and Eucharistic minister at American Martyrs. He served in the Marine Corps for 28 years, including in Iraq and Afghanistan, and was awarded the Bronze Star for his actions in combat during a May 2007 attack on Baghdad. In 2009, he was named Los Angeles County Veteran of the Year.
McCarthy is also a former emergency medical technician and a retired deputy district attorney for Culver City. He serves as a Boy Scout leader in Manhattan Beach for the den of his sons, Connor and Trevor.
“I am so happy that this is the man that is leading our boys in scouting,” said American Martyrs employee Ann Wilk, who assisted McCarthy during the fire. “I have seen how he puts others before himself and know that the safety of our boys is always being considered. Be prepared, safety first, stay calm in an emergency, take action, leave no man behind — this is what I want my son to learn in scouting.”
McCarthy said his initial intention was to wait for the fire department to arrive and not get involved.
“I know the fire department doesn’t need another casualty,” he said. “But someone said there was a worker down there. When people said there was someone trapped down there, I thought, ‘How could I not go down there?’ What if they were unconscious or needed help?” ER
