Four children ranging in age from infancy to 2 years old, as well as three woman - two of them pregnant - escaped from a Main Street apartment fire virtually unscathed last Wednesday afternoon.

After jumping out of the window of the second floor apartment above Rocky & Sons Bakery, and onto an adjacent roof, the women and babies were rescued by a passerby, Rudy Castro. After hearing the women's cries for help, the 17-year-old Farmingdale High School student climbed a fence and onto an outdoor refrigerator to help them down to safety.

Local firefighters arrived within minutes, and began extinguishing the fire.

"When I heard that they got the water on the fire, and that they were making progress, I felt a little better," assistant chief of the Farmingdale Fire Department Donald Tortoso, who oversaw the fire fighting operations, said Thursday. "And to top it all off, the 17-year-old kid who made that save, in the back, to help those people down, that made my day too - that the people weren't in the house."

The victims, who had taken shelter in a nearby office building until an ambulance arrived, were transported to Mid-Island Hospital, Bethpage and treated for minor injuries.

About 100 firefighters from Farmingdale, East Farmingdale, South Farmingdale and Bethpage were involved in the effort. "The crew, the firemen they did an excellent job - a real aggressive attack on the fire. That was a hot fire because of all the smoke and the heat on the second floor, and they had to go up the staircase, and by them doing the aggressive attack, they got the fire out pretty quick," said Tortoso.

The fire departments arrived at 3:40 p.m. and had the blaze under control within about 40 minutes, according to Tortoso. Describing the severity of the fire, he added, "It had a lot of potential to spread, because the bakery was right downstairs, and it was surrounded by other stores." Rocky & Sons Bakery sustained water damage only, according to Tortoso.

The Nassau County fire marshal has determined that the cause of the fire was electrical, and according to Tortoso, it was probably started by heat generated from an extension cord. "It looked like the extension cord went behind the bed, and then down underneath. We don't know if it was under the rug, but it looked like it was down, behind the bed," Tortoso said. "Extension cords get warm, and if you have it covered up by a rug or a bed, it could be dangerous."

The fire started in the back bedroom of the two-bedroom apartment. It was so hot in the room, according to Tortoso, that a disposable razor in the adjacent room, which was not on fire, had melted. "It was totally gutted, totally damaged," he said of the back room. "And the room adjacent to it got heat and smoke damage and water damage." Windows in the dwelling were also damaged due to the fire fighting operations.

According to Tortoso, it was a legal apartment, but it was overcrowded.

Mayor Joseph Trudden, who was also at the scene, later in the week confirmed that the apartment was overcrowded and said that the village subsequently administered the "appropriate summonses."

Trudden added that the village is considering sending a letter to all Main Street apartment landlords requesting a voluntary fire safety inspection. "We're not out to penalize anybody. We want to make the village safer," he said. "Because the public is in the stores below, and we have a duty to protect them."