'Heroic' Actions By Passers-by Save Family From Burning Home

The actions of three passers-by are being credited with saving the lives of four occupants of a house that was destroyed in a fire Monday afternoon in Glenwood.

The structure fire at 209 S. Vine St. was reported shortly after 12:30 p.m. by employees from Leick Construction, who were driving by the house and observed a fire on the front porch. Glenwood firefighters were on scene within minutes of being paged.

“Before we arrived on location, passers-by from Leick Construction saw the fire, went in and got people out of the house,” Glenwood Fire Chief Matt Gray said. “The guys couldn’t make it through the front door so they had to go to the back.”

Gray said the three men - John Lewis, Gabe Record and Damian Pond - rescued four occupants from the house - two adults and two children.

“They grabbed a little girl, grandmother, mother and a boy was upstairs,” Gray said. “They used a trampoline and he jumped from a second story window onto to the trampoline and got out.”

Two of the occupants were transported to a Council Bluffs hospital for treatment for smoke inhalation. Gray said Record and Pond received burns while rescuing the family.

“They did a very heroic thing running into that fire. It was hot and it was moving very fast. Luckily, everybody got out of there,” Gray said. “Those three gentleman are heroes. They saved those people. If they wouldn’t have noticed that fire and got it called in and went in and did what they did, we might have had a little different outcome.”

Gray said the structure was built with balloon framing, which contributed to the fire spreading quickly.

“ A lot of houses back in the day were built with balloon frame,” Gray said. “Basically, the walls go straight up – there’s no floor levels into between that divides the actual floors and that outside wall is basically like a chimney. Once a fire gets to that wall, it’s going to go up to the second story and the attic level. It was a heavy, heat-loaded fire. Once it gets into those walls, you basically have to tear everything out from the floor to the ceiling to get to it. It just goes up.”

The contents of the house, including furniture containing plastic materials and cardboard boxes, created massive amounts of smoke while firefighters worked to put out the blaze.

An electrical device plugged in on the front porch of the house is likely what started the fire, Gray said. He said a candle warmer, box fan and electronics device were on the porch.

“I’m guessing some kind of electronics or electrical device that was sitting out there and overheated,” he said.

Firefighters were on the scene for three hours. GFD received assistance from Malvern, Silver Ciy and Oak Township first responders.

“All of the departments were auto-aided,” Gray said. “Any time in the county, there is a structure fire, all the departments in that district are paged simultaneously. Hopefully, that will get more responders there.”