A survivor of the New Year’s Day fire in Holyoke, which left three dead, shared her dramatic story Friday.

Last Sunday morning, 18-year-old Briana Serrano awoke to black smoke coming down from the ceiling in her third-story apartment. She tried opening the door but saw flames. Serrano woke up her boyfriend and two-year-old daughter. They went to a window. She says neighbors below held out a blanket.

“It was so terrifying, but I knew I had to throw her because in that smoke, it was so hard to breathe,” she told reporters. “So I told them, ‘Please don’t let my daughter fall.'”

“She was telling me, ‘No, Mommy, no. Don’t let me go.’ And I was like, ‘You’re going to be all right, baby, you’re going to be all right. So I let her go and she fell, but they caught her great.”

Serrano then jumped onto a mattress below, breaking a few bones. She’s being treated at Baystate Medical Center in Springfield. Her boyfriend suffered serious burns and made it down on a ladder.

Fire investigators said an electrical problem started the blaze, which destroyed the five-story building.