“We must congratulate Julia, because I believe that today she is reborn. Because I found it, otherwise… Miguel Ángel tells ABC how his neighbor was rescued this Thursday with the help of Leopoldo, who everyone knows as Pol in the Toledo town of La Mata . The two heroes of this story answer the phone exactly five hours after saving the life of 60-year-old Julia, even though she is not out of danger. She is intubated in the intensive care unit of the University Hospital of Toledo, where her two brothers, Paqui (52 years old) and Gabriel, 64 years old, were also admitted.
At one o’clock in the afternoon, Miguel Ángel was passing through Alhambra Street, in the San Pedro neighborhood, when he saw smoke coming from the garage located at number 2, a single-family terraced chalet. He is a garbage truck driver from Gesmat, the company responsible for the collection and disposal of waste from several municipalities in the region, and was heading to work.
“In the trunk of my car, I always have a sledgehammer and a crowbar,” he begins. “And I saw Gabriel, the brother, trying to open the garage door and I started to help him. Soon Pol arrived, we started knocking on the door and tried to open the blinds and the garage window because there was a lot of smoke inside.
A municipal employee, Antonio, and some neighbors poured water with a small garden hose from a neighboring house while the mayor, Indalecio, tried to regulate traffic in this municipality of 800 inhabitants.
Michelangelo and Pol, town hall employeethey started hearing voices inside the house and asked a heartbroken and asthmatic Gabriel if there was anyone inside. “At first he told us there was no one there, but we kept hearing voices until there came a point where we couldn’t hear them anymore.” It was Julia, among the three Tena siblings, who asked for help.
As they did not see her in the street, Miguel Ángel decided to enter the house, where nothing could be seen. He came in through the front door and did so on all fours. In this way he reached the back room and came across Julia. “By feeling, I achieved it. I touched his leg and said, “Here he is!” I got up, grabbed her legs and dragged her down the hall. Then Pol saw me and between the two of us we managed to get her out into the street.
Blackened by smoke, their intervention was very quick, only a few seconds. Julia was left unconscious and Pol performed resuscitation maneuvers until he managed to bring her back to life. “It was difficult to resuscitate her,” admits her rescuer.
Then the doctor on duty arrived, who took care of Julia, along with other paramedics. A mobile intensive care unit transported the woman to an area near the cemetery where a medical helicopter transported her to University Hospital in Toledo. His two brothers also entered it while firefighters were putting out the fire.
The Tena Brothers are a funfair, with a food stand, and they lost everythingas they told the mayor. “They had already returned from their tour of the villages and had their caravan in the garage,” says Indalecio, who thanks his neighbors Pol and Miguel Ángel for their courageous action to save Julia.
