A Harris County man in his 50s was dramatically rescued from a blazing mobile home fire, with life-threatening injuries, northeast of Houston. The Huffman Volunteer Fire Department responded to the inferno located at the 2700 block of 3rd Street in Huffman, as Sheriff Ed Gonzalez reported.
The smoke, spotted by neighbor Ashley McGee, led to the timely rescue by her boyfriend, James Dyer. After a moment's decision to remove window blinds—blinds which obscured her view for months prior—McGee noticed the smoke, an action she described as being guided by a divine prompt, McGee told FOX26Houston, "God works in mysterious ways and thank God that he gave us that urge to move the blinds after so long."
Upon learning about the fire, Dyer, without a second's delay, charged into the flaming structure to retrieve his neighbor, who was at the time unconscious due to the fire that had engulfed his home. "We saw the smoke and I had to get him out of there and didn't know what else to do," he said, in a statement obtained by FOX26Houston. "I grabbed him, pulled him outside, it was super bad, his face was burned pretty bad his hands were burned pretty bad."
Dyer, recounting the victim's condition, said that while pulled out to safety, every breath and cough expelled black smoke from the man's lungs. Eventually regaining consciousness before help arrived, the man could stand on his own yet suffered severe burns and respiratory distress. The Harris County Fire Marshall's office later confirmed the victim's age and that he was flown to the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston and is expected to recover, as reported by FOX26Houston on X.
Harris County neighbor pulls 50-year-old out mobile home fire, man lifeflighted https://t.co/2jnVjNswOK
— FOX26Houston (@FOX26Houston) January 1, 2024
Officials said the fire was deemed accidental, with an overloaded electrical socket to blame. The Harris County Fire Marshall's office is further looking into the incident.
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