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Five police officers will receive letters of commendation from the Berkeley Police Department for their rescue effort in last week’s house fire on Josephine Street. 

The five honorees – Lionell Dozier, Craig Lindenau, Jeff Luna, Joseph Mercado and Brian Wilson – are all relative newcomers to the department. 

When the officers, who were nearby, arrived at the scene before the fire department, they found the family of four perched on the roof of the front porch, in an attempt to escape the flames closing in on them. 

The police officers held a neighbor’s ladder up because it was too short to reach the roof. Pam Ernst climbed down on it, but her partner Leah Kushner, who was on the other side of the roof, jumped, probably at the same time, said Ernst. 

“We couldn’t see each other, but I could hear her,” said Ernst. “She didn’t know I was on the roof with the baby. 

“I threw her down, it was a do-or-die situation. It was the only way to survive.” 

The tot, almost 4 years old, fell into the waiting arms of Officer Mercado. 

Kushner pushed her other daughter, a teen-ager, off the roof and the girl fell safely into bushes. 

While the other three residents who were aroused from their beds were unharmed, the children’s mother lost consciousness after her leap, said Police Capt. Bobby Miller. She suffered a compressed vertebra and severe bruising. 

She is recovering in Alta Bates Medical Center, “but it will be a long road,” said Ernst. 

Miller said the officers had to kick over a fence and move Kushner as carefully as they could to a safe location away from the heat, smoke and flames. Neighbors brought blankets. 

All of these actions, Miller said, took place in a few minutes before the paramedics arrived and took the two women and the children to the hospital.  

While the couple lost almost everything in the fire, they salvaged the records of their adoption facilitation business that were stored in file cabinets in an office room. 

On Friday Ernst said she was getting ready to think about replacing car keys, credit cards and insurance. 

Assistant Fire Chief David Orth said department investigators determined the fire started in the kitchen with oily rags on the floor. 

He said the owners of the house had stained a table in the breakfast nook and worked late into the night. 

The kind of material they used to stain the table is susceptible to combustion under the right conditions. Some companies recommend soaking the rags in water and storing them in a metal container outside. 

Heat is generated by the chemicals in the stain to harden it, but if it is concentrated enough, Orth said, it can ignite and the fuel in the rag can burn through the floor. 

The investigation into last week’s other fire, the May 21 blaze on Fourth Street that started in Andros Inc., a company that manufactures gas-analyzing equipment, reveals that the fire apparently was accidental, said Orth. 

Its probable cause was a heater used in a room to test the gas-analyzing equipment. The room would be heated up to provide the right conditions to test the machines in a production area of the plant. 

“We don’t know any more abut the heaters in terms of malfunction. That will be done later with lab work. The insurance company will take the investigation from where it is now,” he said.