ANDERSON — Two good Samaritans saved a woman and her cat from a burning house on Tuesday after they noticed smoke billowing from the attic of the three-story home.
Rural-Metro Ambulance paramedics Joe Hilburt and Dan Griffith had just dropped off a patient at the hospital and were near 14th and Jackson streets when they noticed smoke in the sky just after 11 a.m.
Hilburt said he and Griffith headed toward 13th Street and expected to see fire trucks blocking the street.
Instead, they found a quiet Victorian three-story home with puffs of smoke rising from the roof.
The men rushed out of the ambulance and started banging on the front door. “We just kept going from door to door to see if anyone was home,” Griffith said Tuesday.
Griffith raced to the rear of the home, where he found homeowner Myra Hall by her car. He saw that she was headed back into the home and alerted her of the fire.
Griffith and Hilburt then entered the house and helped Hall find her cat, Skitch, and allowed her to gather a few personal items before rushing her from the home.
“You couldn’t even smell smoke inside,” Hilburt said.
Hall had just taken a shower on the second floor and was about to leave for work when the paramedics arrived. She had no idea her home was on fire.
Hall’s husband, Earl Hall, was not home at the time of the fire, and Myra Hall said that if paramedics hadn’t intervened, she would have left for work, losing her home and her cat in the blaze.
Sitting on a curb under a shade tree Tuesday, Myra Hall watched firefighters douse her three-story home with water while Skitch the cat panted and paced in a cage nearby.
“He’s scared,” she said, noting the cat’s unusual behavior.
Anderson firefighters offered to give oxygen to the cat, but Hall refused. The cat was frightened, but not injured.
Anderson Fire Department Battalion Chief Jerry Quire said the fire was contained to the attic, thanks to the quick actions of AFD firefighters.
“They made a good stop on it. The big issue was finding access to the third floor,” Quire said.
A stairwell leading to the attic was hidden in a small room, so firefighters placed a ladder against the three-story home and scaled it to the top, dumping water into the attic through a broken window.
AFD’s ladder truck was used as firefighters were elevated in a bucket with a chain saw in hand to cut venting holes in the roof.
Though their main focus was to contain the fire, Quire said, firefighters did their best to preserve Hall’s belongings.
“They tarped the furniture,” he said.
“It’s my worst nightmare,” Myra Hall said from her perch on the curb. “We bought this house as a repo and just put so much into it. These old houses go up so quick.”
As she watched firefighters scale the side of the home she’s lived in for six years, Myra thought of the man who alerted her to the fire. “I wish I knew his name.”
Griffith and Hilburt confirmed their identities as the two good Samaritans who saved Hall to The Herald Bulletin late Tuesday afternoon.
Although the attic of the home sustained significant fire and water damage, Quire said it was not a total loss. The cause of the fire was still under investigation.
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