When a fire broke out in the middle of the night, trapping his sleeping family upstairs, a Santa Ana man’s quick thinking and courage saved five people as flames engulfed their South Linda Way home on Friday, Dec. 5.

All five residents of the home were asleep upstairs around 1:30 a.m. In one room, a woman awoke and smelled smoke and woke up her husband, Captain Sean Doran of the Orange County Fire Authority said. The husband, 67, opened the bedroom door but quickly shut it after feeling intense heat. He was able to get out of the bedroom through a window and onto a patio cover, said Doran, who was at the scene.

He jumped off the cover onto the grass below, down nine feet, to get a ladder so his wife could climb down to safety.

Without missing a beat, he grabbed more ladders and ran to b

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