Fort Worth Elderly Man Saved From House Fire
Follow CBSDFW.COM: Facebook | Twitter
FORT WORTH (CBSDFW) - An elderly man was rescued from a burning home in south Fort Worth in the 2100 block of Andrew Avenue early Wednesday. Firefighters say a closed bedroom door gave friends, family and a firefighter time to save the man's life.
"We didn't have enough time to go to the front door, there was too much fire and too much smoke," said Michael Slaughter who was in the house during the fire. "So I went straight to the bedroom."
Alone in the back bedroom were Slaughter and 77-year-old Bobby Fikes who has trouble walking. The question was how to get the elderly man out of the house.
"You could feel the flames," Slaughter said. "I never been in nothing like that. But I couldn't panic at that time. If I did panic he probably wouldn't have been here."
Slaughter began pushing Fikes through a window.
"I had him like this here," Slaughter said as bent over at the waist. "And he was hanging out the window like this so he wouldn't suffocate from the smoke because it was white smoke and black smoke and everything was just smoked up."
Family members rushed to help from outside.
"So they had pulled him as much as they could to get him to the window, so they could get his head to have some air," said Fikes' daughter Shirley. "And we couldn't get him and we were tugging and pulling."
But Fikes foot was wedged between his bed and the wall.
The closed bedroom door kept the fire out of the bedroom as the struggle to rescue Fikes continued. A Fort Worth firefighter arrived to help the desperate family pull Fikes and Slaughter out of the house.
"That one fireman, he just reached in and got him and pulled my daddy out," Shirley Fikes said as tears streamed down her face.
"I don't know how I inhaled it and how I breathed," Slaughter said. "I guess it's nothing but God! It was God. I know it was God!"
Fikes suffered from smoke inhalation but is expected to be okay.
(©2016 CBS Local Media, a division of CBS Radio Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.)
