Within seconds, he felt her torso.
She wasn't breathing.
The firefighter lifted the limp body of Hailey Jordan Taylor to a small second-floor window opening. Fire Chief Jay Delaney tucked her soot-covered body under his arm and carried her down the ladder to emergency medical technician Angela Patla.
"I thought it was grim," said Patla, who turned Hailey onto her back. But there was hope as she ran with Hailey to the ambulance. "She was taking gasping breaths."
On Tuesday night, Hailey was recovering in the pediatric intensive care unit at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia.
About 12:30 p.m. Hailey had been watching Shrek, a favorite DVD, at the home she shares with her mother and grandmother at 21 Espy St., when the entertainment center caught fire.
Her grandmother, Alda Shilkoski, smelled smoke and went downstairs.
The television cord, worn thin, had sparked and set the bottom of the entertainment center on fire, said fire inspector Capt. Bill Sharksnas. When the fire started, "(Hailey) was six or seven feet from the front door."
"She ran up the steps and wouldn't come down," said Shilkoski, 54, from her bed in the intensive care unit at Geisinger Wyoming Valley Medical Center, Plains Township, Tuesday evening. She was being treated for smoke inhalation.
The living room, near the front door, was filling with smoke and Shilkoski couldn't get upstairs.
When the television began to melt she ran outside.
"I was driving by and I saw a woman outside and her face was covered in black," said Kevin Holbert, who lives nearby. "She was hysterical."
Holbert and neighbor Bryson Wardle tried to get inside the house through a back door but the smoke was too heavy. "I've never seen anything like it," Holbert said.
"I screamed to help the baby," Shilkoski said. "I just wanted to get her out of there."
Three people called 911 at about 12:34 p.m., said Fire Battalion Chief Ed Snarski.
Snarski was among the first to arrive at the fire in the city's Parsons section. When he could see the fire from Mill Street and smell the smoke on George Avenue, he called a second alarm. Nearly every fire vehicle in the city and about 20 firefighters fought the blaze.
Joe Davis of the Department of Public Works helped Snarski put a ladder up to the small window in Hailey's bedroom. Three police officers offered support.
Two two-man crews headed into the burning building to look for the girl. Others battled the flames, ran hose and watched for danger.
When McHenry arrived with Pvt. Robert Sudnick, the ladder was ready.
McHenry went up first and quickly realized the small window wouldn't accommodate a firefighter with an air tank. So he broke out the window and frame, then climbed in.
He fell.
"For a split-second I thought I was going down to the first floor," McHenry said. But at about five feet down, he hit ground. Sudnick - "he thought he was going in to rescue me" - fell onto McHenry moments later. Then their training kicked in. McHenry began searching along the wall to the right. Sudnick took left. By the time Sudnick found Hailey's empty bed, McHenry was handing the girl to Delaney, who'd climbed the ladder to look for his fallen men. Meanwhile another crew had reached her bedroom from the other side.
"There were higher beings there guiding us," McHenry said. Hailey had been rescued 12 minutes after 911 was dialed. The fire was under control 10 minutes later, Snarski said.
"Every step of the process worked today," Delaney said. "Accolades are due to each and every person there. Without the guys extinguishing downstairs, the guys may not have gotten up there."
"No one's Superman," McHenry said.
The firefighters agreed Hailey's safety is its own reward. "I wasn't feeling too good 'til I heard she was OK," Snarski said.
"The kid we've heard is now laughing," Sudnick said. "Thank god."
She came close to a very different fate, said Chief Paramedic Jude Spellman, who was waiting for the girl in the ambulance. "A couple more minutes and she would have expired."
In the ambulance on the way to Geisinger in Plains Township, she opened her eyes, said paramedic Patla. Then at the hospital she began to talk, telling emergency workers her name and age. She suffered from smoke and heat inhalation and was flown to Philadelphia for more specialized treatment.
Before the flight she was reunited with her mother, Amanda Shilkoski. She also talked to her grandmother.
"She's really quiet," Alda Shilkoski said. "She said 'Hi Granny. I love you.'
