Father & Son Credited With Saving Woman From Burning Home
DENVER (CBS4) - A neighbor's quick actions likely saved a life on Saturday. As smoke filled a house, a good Samaritan ran inside.
The fire broke out at a home located at 36th Avenue and Ivanhoe Street in Denver's North Park Hill neighborhood. Fred Edmonds actually credits his son with spotting the smoke that was pouring out of his house. Then they both jumped into action.
"I'm thankful he saw it because I probably wasn't that perceptive at the time," Edmonds said.
"We saw an open door with smoke pouring out of it and a lot of screaming," Edmonds' son Fred said.
The younger Fred called 911 and the dad ran toward the flames.
"I don't care who it was, I was going to get them out of there for sure," Edmonds said.
"I thought he was kind of crazy," his son said.
"I ran into the house and I saw the lady was sitting on the bed. We kicked the door open and smoke just engulfed the entire ceiling; and it hit me in the face," Edmonds said. "The first thing I thought was just to pick her up and get her out of the house. So I picked her up and was able to carry her out of the house while the smoke was everywhere … her daughter was in there looking for the dog. I actually thought it was another person in the house, but it was actually the dog."
Twenty-eight firefighters responded to the house. The cause of the fire still isn't known.
"It's going to take the arson investigators some time to go through and sift through the rubble and the debris try to figure out what went wrong," CJ Haberkorn with the Denver Fire Department said.
But the firefighters know they were helped by a good Samaritan who likely saved a woman's life.
"My first thing was to get whoever was in the house out. Same thing I would have done for anybody. And I hope they would do it for me as well," Edmonds said.
Denver Fire said they've had a lot of house fires lately and urge everyone to check smoke detectors and make sure they're working.