Geradette Borrego tried to save her father’s life on Monday morning, but the fire that engulfed the back bedroom of her northwest Denver bungalow was moving too fast.
Borrego, 33, woke at about 9:30 a.m. and heard banging upstairs at her home at 3034 W. Denver Place.
When she reached the bedroom of her father, 62-year-old Gerald Borrego Sr., and opened the door, the smoke was too thick for her to enter.
Bruce and Jane Atchison, newlyweds who live in the neighborhood, were driving by and saw what they said looked like steam coming from the house.
The Atchisons stopped their car and tried to get to Borrego’s father.
“The smoke was getting thicker and thicker and I crawled to the bedroom to see if he was in there,” Bruce Atchison said. “I called out, ‘Sir, are you in here? Are you in here? I kicked the door open and the mattress was on fire.
“The flames must have been 6 feet high,” he said.
Meanwhile, Jane Atchison was yelling that 911 dispatchers were saying the would-be rescuers should get out of the house.
“I went out to the front yard and the windows exploded,” Atchison said. “I tried to be a good Samaritan and do what I could do to save this man, but it did not work out.”
Denver Fire Lt. Phil Champagne said there was nothing that could be done to get Borrego out.
“They went into the bedroom and it was fully ablaze and they were forced to leave,” Champagne said.
It only took a couple of minutes for firefighters to get to the house. An open bedroom window supplied oxygen to the fire.
Family members said Gerald Borrego was probably smoking a cigar in bed. The cause of the fire is under investigation.
Geradette Borrego said she had talked to her dad several times about not smoking in bed, but he didn’t listen.
Gerald Borrego was a retired Safeway warehouse worker. He was a father and stepfather to four children.
His wife died in 1998. His stepdaughter, Sherry Lucero, said he lost weight, started drinking and let himself go because he was suffering from a broken heart.
Geradette Borrego said she asked her father to come and live with her when her mother died. She said he had trouble getting around on his own.
Borrego was home on Monday morning, a time when she is usually at work. Her dad, she said, may not have known she was home and as a result didn’t call for help.
Staff writer Felisa Cardona can be reached at 303-954-1219 or fcardona@denverpost.com.
