When David Squillante and Doran Smith finally got to go on their honeymoon after having to put it off for two years because of the pandemic, all they wanted to do was enjoy the architecture, food, and beach in Spain. But while on their honeymoon in Barcelona in late September, Squillante, who sells food, and Smith, who works as a software engineer, helped save babies from a fire. The Boston Globe says that the couple was on their way to a guided tour in a beautiful park when they saw some women running out of a nearby building and into the street in a panic.
A Bristol, R.I., couple helped save “15-20” sleeping babies from a burning nursery during their honeymoon in Spain, according to a report. https://t.co/kcxL6E36iT
— Boston Globe Rhode Island (@Globe_RI) October 11, 2022
Smith told WJAR, “I saw a flame coming out of the doorway next to the door that these women had come out of,” Smith told WJAR. “So I said, ‘Oh my god, there’s a fire.'”At that moment, Squillante’s “instinct took over,” and he ran into a different part of the building and into a room with about 20 babies. Even though the room wasn’t yet on fire, it was starting to get smokey, so the honeymooner put the kids in cribs and rolled the cribs to where his wife was, in the front doorway. As more people came to help, Smith pushed the cribs across the street to get them out of the building that was on fire.
Smith said, “We were just literally taking cribs with a few kids in (them) and rolling them across the street to the high school lobby,” Smith explained. Meanwhile, Squillante tried his best to calm down the nursery workers who were there despite only speaking kitchen Spanish. “Tranquilo. Tranquilo,” he told them, Squillante recalled. “We couldn’t speak the language, but there was a universal language—we were all just trying to help,” Smith added. They think the whole thing went on for about 10 minutes before fire crews from Barcelona arrived and got things under control.
After they’d done their part, Squillante and Smith picked up right where they’d left off before they found the burning building. They did go on their park tour, but they were about half an hour late. It wasn’t until they were almost done that they realized how serious what they had just been through was. “We looked at each other and said, remember that time we saved a bunch of babies?” Smith said. “It felt like we watched it in a movie,” Squillante chimed in. “It just didn’t feel real.”
“It was wild,” Smith said with a laugh. But this wasn’t the first time Squillante had been a hero. The 38-year-old man, whose father and grandfather were both firefighters, once stopped a man from jumping off the top of an overpass. He went out again during a storm to look for a friend’s lost dog and saw a man sleeping next to a bicycle. In less than half an hour, he called 911 to help the man and also found the dog. Smith said, “Dave is always in the right place at the right time,” Smith said. He might soon have more stories like this to tell because he is thinking about becoming a volunteer firefighter in Bristol, like his father and grandfather.