A fire sparked along East Highway 80 and had it not been for a quick response from people nearby, an elderly couple's home may not be standing.
"We stopped to make sure there was no one here to get hurt. By the time we got to the door, and the old man got the door open the fire was up to the house," says Ashley Chitwood.
Ashley says she and her friend Christina helped evacuate the elderly couple, but after they had to break down a glass door. Christina describes those crazy moments, "He [the elderly man] couldn't find the key to open the door, so we busted out the side glass door, and we woke up the other old lady that lived there to get her out of the house."
That's when Glen Cox and several others grabbed shovels and water hoses to put out any hot spots. "Basically anything we could put out close to the house, we put out and tried to stay out of harm's way."
While the Abilene Fire Department rolled out their brush trucks to fight the big flames, I watched as these men fearlessly climbed over fences to put out any flames the trucks couldn't get to. "It's really hot," describes Cox,"I'm completely beat, my hands are burnt, I mean it's good to go, but it's just hot and really smoky."
So why would these people put themselves through all of this?
"[I'm] just a normal human being trying to help out somebody else. Hopefully, they'd do the same for me if something happened to my house," says Cox.
Thanks to the effort by these brave people, and from the Abilene Fire Department, the blaze was quickly controlled and this elderly man, and his wife, will be able to keep their home.
