By Michael O. Allen, Record Staff Writer | Sunday, February 16, 1992
The Record (New Jersey) | All Editions | NEWS | A03
An 11-year-old boy injured in a Palisades Park apartment building fire was moved Saturday to a Westchester County Medical Center burn unit to place him near a machine that would help him breathe if he should need it.
Although the boy, Angelo Gagliardi, is able to breathe through a ventilator, his windpipe was damaged so severely that he may need the extracorporeal membrane oxygenator, which few hospitals have, said Dr. Anthony C. Barbara, chief of the Hackensack Medical Center burn unit and head of pediatric surgery.
Angelo suffered second- and third-degree burns to his arms, legs, and face, and smoke inhalation. Heat from the fire about 1:50 a.m. Friday ruptured the passageway to his lungs.
The special respirator serves as an external lung for people with significant breathing problems, Barbara said.
Barbara said such equipment isn’t readily available, and New Jersey does not have a place where a victim Angelo’s age can receive treatment. Calls to centers in other states were fruitless, he said.
But, with help from the National Burn Victim Foundation, a non-profit agency that arranged Angelo’s transportation, Hackensack Medical Center officials searched a University of Michigan national registry of centers utilizing the machines and came up with the Westchester medical center in Valhalla.
The machine can get him over a rough period with his breathing until the lining of the tracheobronchial tree regenerates, Barbara said. “We felt it was best to transfer him now, while he’s stable, rather than wait for a catastrophe. ”
Also critically injured were Angelo’s mother, Ada Cruz, and stepbrother, Luis Maldonado. A spokeswoman at Teaneck’s Holy Name Hospital, where they were being treated, said Moldonado, 21, and Cruz, 43, had improved Saturday, and that their conditions were stable.
Cruz’s daughters, Monica Nieves, 6, and Christiana Gagliardi, 12, and her mother, Maria Owens, 62, were treated at Englewood Hospital on Friday and released, a hospital spokeswoman said.
Jose Castro, superintendent of the adjoining 21-unit buildings at 28 and 32 E. Palisades Blvd., said Cruz had just moved into a basement apartment with her four children at the beginning of the month ironically because she was concerned about fire hazards at the apartment she was moving from.
The fire was ruled an accident, but authorities were investigating why the hallway fire alarm was switched off. Tenants often go to the circuit breaker and switch it off, Castro said.
Palisades Park police Capt. John Genovese, coordinator of the borough’s emergency management team, fractured a knuckle getting into the apartment during the rescue. Fire Chief Donald Spohn said borough fire and medical emergency teams were assisted by Leonia, Ridgefield, Fort Lee, Cliffside Park, and Teaneck emergency, fire, and ambulance personnel.
ID: 17368966 | Copyright © 1992, The Record (New Jersey)
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