Virginia Fire Chiefs Association, Inc.

     A Dale City man saved a 5-year-old boy inside a burning house Monday after the child's grandfather, who could not speak English, came to him for help..
    Harris Souvannarath, 28, said a man walked into his house at 5692 Roundtree Drive speaking Spanish but Souvannarath couldn't understand what he wanted.
    ``He didn't knock or nothing, he just walked in the house,'' he said, recalling the man had a phone number he wanted Souvannarath to call but those who answered also could not speak English.
    After two failed conversations, the elderly man left and Souvannarath said he walked upstairs and looked out across his back yard. He saw smoke coming from the house behind him, at 13880 Racine Court, and the old man trying to put out the fire with a water hose. Souvannarath said he went over to get the man, later identified as Augustine Benitez, 63, away.
    ``I didn't even know it was his house, I started yelling at him to get away,'' he said. ``When I got over there, that's when I head the boy crying.
    ``I didn't think about it,'' Souvannarath said Wednesday. ``I just ran in.''
    Souvannarath said he covered his face with a shirt and called for the boy until he found him next to an upstairs living-room window.
    ``I grabbed him, covered his face and ran outside,'' he said. ``I was holding the kid until the ambulance came.''
    Prince William County Battalion Chief Matt Smolsky, a fire department spokesman, said firefighters arrived just before 1 p.m. and put out the blaze, which caused $175,000 in damages.
    The cause of the fire still is under investigation but is believed to be accidental.
    The boy and the elderly man were screened at a local hospital but were not injured, Smolsky said. Souvannarath said he incurred only a slight headache Wednesday.