Heroic RI honeymooners in Spain rescue up to 20 babies from burning building: ‘Instinct took over’

A couple of Rhode Island honeymooners are called heroes after rescuing up to 20 babies from a burning building while sight-seeing in Spain.

David Squillante and Doran Smith, who married in 2020, were on their way to a park tour in Barcelona to celebrate their belated honeymoon on September 28 when Smith saw women screaming from a burning hall, prompting the couple to spring into action.

Squillante, 38, immediately “dropped his backpack and ran across the street” into the building that turned out to be a daycare center.

“I just came in and saw a bunch of babies sleeping and screaming,” Squillante, who comes from a family of firefighters, told me. NBC News.

The groom, who speaks very little Spanish, said “instinct took over” as he ran into the burning building and straight into the smoky playroom.

Squillante immediately “dropped his backpack and ran across the street” to another entrance and immediately began feeding his wife children and putting more in cribs to drive them out (pictured)

The nursery helped them to get the children out of the nursery. When asked why staff hadn’t evacuated the building yet, Smith told DailyMail.com: “There were no flames in the nursery so I think the staff were just trying to figure out where the smoke was coming from and trying to decide what should we do’

They managed to get the children to safety at a local high school across the street and the couple believe no one was injured.

Smith, also 38, told DailyMail.com she didn’t know how the fire started or how long it took for the couple to arrive, but they believe it was an “electric fire in the walls.”

“Still, it looked like we were walking past it when the chaos started.”

Squillante began placing about 20 children in cribs as the smoke grew heavier and drove them to his new wife, while trying to calm daycare staff.

He found one of the children in a playhouse and gave the child to his partner, who said the baby looked scared but didn’t cry like the others and squeezed her finger as she held them.

Smith told DailyMail.com that staff probably hadn’t evacuated the building yet because “there were no flames in the nursery.”

“I think the staff were just trying to figure out where the smoke was coming from and trying to decide what to do.”

“We couldn’t speak the language, but there was a universal language — we were all just trying to help,” Smith, a software engineer, told the Boston Globe.

As others jumped in, they began to line babies out of the building and into a local high school across the street. The entire process took about 10 minutes, the couple said.

The newlyweds left shortly after the firefighters arrived and believe no one was injured.

The couple then went straight to their park tour and showed up about 30 minutes late.

The surreal experience didn’t hit them until later, they said.

During the tour, they turned to each other and said, “Remember that time we rescued a bunch of babies?”

“It felt like we were seeing it in a movie, it just didn’t feel real,” Squillante, who works in food sales, told the Globe.

Right after that, they continued their park tour, showing up up to 30 minutes late. It wouldn’t hit them until later, when they turned to each other and said, “Remember that time we rescued a bunch of babies?”

The couple married in October 2020, but did not honeymoon until September 2022 due to the pandemic

Smith said the moment her husband ran into the building without thinking about it was when she realized he was the person to be around in case of an emergency.

Squillante has a gift for being in the right place at the right time – as this was not his first experience of accidentally saving lives.

In another close save, he and a paramedic stopped a man from jumping over an overpass, while Squillante was just cruising on unfamiliar roads on his motorcycle.

The selfless bystander also once went out into the rain to help find his friend’s missing dog — only to find a man who passed out on a bike ride, and the missing dog.

Since the fire, the food vendor says he’s considering following in his father’s and grandfather’s footsteps and becoming a volunteer firefighter.