Six members of the Rockland Fire Department will be honored by the state for their roles in the attempted rescue of a Weymouth police dispatcher killed in a house fire.
Deputy Chief William Ferguson, Lt. Donald Hussey and Firefighters Thomas Heaney, Michael Tracy, Michael Mullen and Thomas Henderson will be given the Meritorious Group Award at the state’s annual Firefighter of the Year award ceremony on Dec. 3 at Faneuil Hall.
The presenting will be done by Gov. Deval Patrick, state Fire Marshal Stephen Coan and Secretary of Public Safety Kevin Burke.
The award is given for “exceptional acts of heroism.”
The Rockland firefighters were nominated for the award for their responses to the Jan. 23 fire that took the life of Weymouth Police Department dispatcher Kerrin M. Kelly-Nelson, 42.
Kelly-Nelson, who had a daughter serving in the Army in Iraq, was unconscious when the firefighters pulled her from the second floor of her burning house at 248 Centre Ave. She was later pronounced dead at Brockton Hospital.
Hussey, Heaney and Tracy entered the house through the kitchen but had to flee when a propane tank, wedged into a burning gas oven, exploded seconds later, filling the kitchen with fire.
One firefighter got out through a window. The other two rushed back out through the kitchen door.
Although they were injured, Hussey, Heaney and Tracy ran back into the house and found Kelly-Nelson in a second-floor bedroom. A neighbor said rescue workers then tried to revive Nelson with CPR for several minutes.
According to Fire Chief J. Michael Sammon, the fire still remains under investigation.
Reach Andrew Lightman at alightman@ledger.com.
