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“I think his lack of self promotion says a lot about his character,” said Sgt. Richard Schultz. “Rare is the person who stops and does the right thing when others continue to drive by. Rarer still is the person who does the right thing simply because it was right and not for the recognition.”
Brauch, 61, a former special police officer, was driving along Fair Lawn Avenue early Thursday morning when he noticed a plume of smoke while he was stopped for a red light at River Road, the sergeant said.
He immediately drove up to the house and found a second-floor tenant running out of the burning two-family building.
She told him everyone upstairs got out but that the downstairs residents might still be inside.
He then “runs in and starts to bang on the apartment door,” said Schultz, his department’s Traffic & Community Policing Supervisor. “When he got no response, he tried the door and found it unlocked.
“Entering the apartment, he found three occupants gathered together, none realizing that the second floor was fully engulfed.”
Brauch ushered two of them out, then pushed out the third, a young man in a wheelchair.
“He and [our] officers then scooped up the disabled man and carried him off the porch and across the street to safety,” Schultz said.
“Dean then left without saying a word nor giving his name,” he said.
“When I spoke with him later, he told me of a story back when he was a special police officer and received a life saving commendation. His family only learned of this when they read it in the paper!,” the sergeant said. “How’s that for modesty?”
Brauch‘s daughter, for one, was particularly proud.
“He should be recognized as a hero,” Amy Brauch said. “That man is my DAD! We are all proud of him.”
Brauch, a father of four and grandfather of five, was a special officer when he lived in Prospect Park. He now lives in North Haledon.
“His actions helped to ensure that there were no injuries at this fire,” Schultz said.
The Fair Lawn Avenue blaze, between 2nd & 3rd Streets, was reported at 6:50 a.m. by a neighbor a block away “who spotted the fire while backing out of her driveway,” the sergeant said.
Police Officers Paul Donohue, Anthony Lugo, Tom Check and Eric Eleshewich were among the first to arrive, and they cleared out the house and two adjacent homes — with help from Brauch.
It quickly became a two-alarm fire, with units from Elmwood Park, Saddle Brook and Glen Rock zooming there in support, along with a “rapid response team” from the Paterson Fire Department and the Fair Lawn Ambulance Corps, Schultz said.
The blaze was knocked down by 8:30, leaving firefighters to douse potential hot spots. Schultz said the road was reopened shortly after 11 o’clock.
Fair Lawn’s Office of Emergency Management took the four residents of the two-family building to Town Hall, where they were given food and shelter while the Red Cross found them a place to stay, the sergeant said.
Inspectors were trying to determine a cause but they said it doesn’t appear suspicious.
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