Local man to the rescue

Times Reporter 

 

A property in the Brentwood Estates caught fire on Aug. 25 just after 2 p.m., and spread at a rapid rate. Josh Metz and his wife Jenny were driving to their house just behind the hospital on the north side of Brent Boulevard, when they saw dark smoke and debris in the air.

“I saw the smoke and it looked pretty black. I said to Jenny, ‘I don’t think that’s somebody’s campfire,’ ” said Metz.

As they drove closer the fire kept building. By the time they parked the car it had spread from the garage to the trailer. 

Metz told his wife to call the fire department just in case others hadn’t yet – but she could not get through.

“It wouldn’t even connect the call. One guy said he had to use his OnStar in his car. You couldn’t get through to 911, it was just blank,” he said.

After EMS was reached, roughly a dozen people were standing by taking photos and recording the fire.

“I asked, ‘Sure no one’s in that trailer?’ and everybody gave me a dumb look,” Metz said. He ran up and broke the front windows of the mobile home using his elbows.

“It was just hot, and the smoke … you could just hear the wind and the air just sucking in hard,” he said. “I put my head in there and was yelling if anyone was in there, but the smoke, you couldn’t see more than a foot, and the heat was just stupid.”

Metz then went around to the side of the house, but says it was too hot to even touch. He then went to the trailer next door and with the help of another young man, shoulder checked the door and let out two dogs and two cats. On the other side of the burning trailer, he alerted an elderly couple about the fire next door and rushed them out to safety. Another man was saved, who had been sleeping with his dog. At this point, Metz says, the first responders had finally arrived.

“We had four trucks there, and we had the assistance of Strathmore Rural Fire as well,” said Bas Owel, captain at the Strathmore Fire Department, who determined it was a structure fire. Thankfully, the flames were only contained to that single mobile home and garage. 

“The case is still under investigation at this time, but arson has been ruled out,” Owel said. “Pretty much the garage and mobile home are a total loss.”

It took the fire department a few hours to put out the flames; it’s too early to say how it could have been prevented.

“There were no injuries, everyone was out of the mobile home at the time of the fire,” said Owel.

“I’m glad to hear now that there was nobody in there, but I got pretty stressed out,” said Metz. “It was pretty messed up. The only thing that frustrated me was that the house was burning down, and how people just sit there, record it and talk. No one ran to the house, to clear it out – they just wanted to record it. It was mind-blowing, how no one did anything.”

Metz has First Aid training, but said he would have done what he hopes anyone else would do for him.

“My first thought was the least courtesy you can do is to make sure no one’s in there. You just, you never know. Dogs too, especially,” he said. “It’s just fear … There’s no way I could’ve gone in (to the burning trailer) but like, if there was somebody in there how could you live with it?”

No recognition is wanted from Metz, and he “hopes people aren’t pissed that I busted down their doors,” he said, “But people have the choice that they’re going to help; they don’t have to go into a burning building, but they should know to clear other houses. These are your neighbours. They could have kids and dogs. I understand, it could blow up, I get that, but I don’t know – you just do it.”

Metz says another two minutes and the other trailers that he saved would have gone up in flames too.

“The thing that bothered me the most, in this day and age, everyone’s got camera phones and video tapes. It just seemed like people were more interested in stopping to get photos than in helping anyone else out. Everyone just wants to get it on YouTube or post it on their Facebook,” he said. “You don’t have to run into the flames, but I think it’s important for a community to do that kind of stuff.”