‘She’ll help anybody’: 6-year-old receives award for saving family from Galesburg fire

GALESBURG — Six-year-old Kylee Stivers was recognized by the mayor and members of the Galesburg Police and Fire Departments in the Public Safety Building today with a “certificate of excellence” for helping save her family from a fire.

Stivers had heard a fire detector alarm going off in the downstairs apartment around 5 a.m. on May 20. She woke up her mother, Sylvie Stivers, and grandmother, Jane Hallberg, who smelled smoke and saw a fire in the downstairs apartment. 

Firefighter Joe Grodjesk said the fire had started atop a mattress in the unoccupied downstairs apartment and that Stivers’ actions were crucial due to how quickly the fire could have grown.

“To be able to catch this in the incipient stage was of the utmost importance because a mattress that's on fire produces an incredible amount of energy,” Grodjesk said. “And then if we put that in a room with other objects that are flammable, it can grow very rapidly. It can double in size at least every minute.”

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Sylvie, who sleeps next to an air conditioner, said she wouldn’t have heard the alarm if her daughter hadn’t awakened her. By the time his fire engine arrived at 378 N. Broad St. all of the building’s occupants were out of the building. There were no injuries reported.

Sylvie and Hallberg described Stivers as a very polite and kind 6-year-old who likes to draw with crayons and pick flowers. She arrived at the Public Safety Building holding a yellow daffodil. 

"She's always trying to help me,” Hallberg said. “To get my cane, or if I drop something.”

“She touches a lot of people's lives, I'll tell you that,” Sylvie said.

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