Police officers are not typically trained in fire rescues, but Hopkinsville Police Chief Jason Newby remembered a school lesson that helped him save a woman from a burning house Monday morning on East Fourth Street.
Newby had driven straight to the house when he heard the emergency call for firefighters. He arrived first and learned a woman was still in the house.
“I remembered what we were taught in school … that the smoke rises, so get as low to the ground as you can,” Newby described later in a telephone interview.
Thick smoke was pouring out the front door, so Newby got on his hands and knees and crawled into the first room. When he got to a hallway, he saw flames. There was no way forward and he had to back out.
Outside again, he went around the side of the house and found an open window. He could see the woman inside.
“I said, ‘Can you crawl out?’
“She said, ‘I can’t.’”
It appeared the woman couldn’t use her legs. Newby reached through the window and pulled her out.
What happened for the next several minutes was a blur for Newby.
“I was on my hands and knees in the front yard gaging and spitting up smoke and soot,” he said.
The woman was taken to Jennie Stuart Medical Center in an ambulance. Newby said she did not require CPR at the fire scene. Her name and condition were not available Monday evening.
No one else was trapped in the house, said Newby. Officials believe the fire started in the hallway. The cause was under investigation, according to an HFD Facebook post.
“I’ve been to a lot of house fires where they didn’t make it out, so I’m just glad this one turned out the way it did,” Newby said.
Jennifer P. Brown is co-founder, publisher and editor of Hoptown Chronicle. You can reach her at editor@hoptownchronicle.org. Brown was a reporter and editor at the Kentucky New Era, where she worked for 30 years. She is a co-chair of the national advisory board to the Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues, governing board past president for the Kentucky Historical Society, and co-founder of the Kentucky Open Government Coalition. She serves on the Hopkinsville History Foundation's board.
