Agents save occupants from house fire

Two Yuma Sector Border Patrol agents on their way to their patrol areas are credited with saving the lives of the occupants of a home whose garage was burning Sunday morning by trying to put out the fire and by knocking on the property's windows and doors until someone inside finally woke up.

According to Rural/Metro spokeswoman Charly McMurdie, at about 4 a.m., a supervisory Border Patrol agent saw what appeared to be a flash of light coming from inside the garage of a home in the 5500 block of West 8th Street in Yuma and stopped to investigate.

“They very well saved the lives of those people. Smoke can overcome people very quickly and can incapacitate them,” McMurdie said. “They were fortunate the agent was driving down that road and saw the fire starting.”

Once back at the residence, the supervisory agent saw that a fire burning inside the garage was beginning to spread. He contacted the Yuma Station to request the assistance of the fire department and tried to get the attention of any possible occupants inside that house.

Within moments, the supervisory agent, who by now had picked up a garden hose and was trying to contain the fire, was joined by another agent who began knocking on the property's windows and doors trying to wake up any occupants.

Eventually someone answered the door and the agent told them that they needed to get out of the home because it was on fire, but they went back inside to wake the other occupant and to gather some personnel possessions.

“If it hadn't been for the Border Patrol agent who stopped and called it in, the outcome could have been much worse for the occupants due to there being no working smoke detectors in the home,” said Capt. Loren Hannon of Rural/Metro Station 5.

Agent Kyle Estes, public affairs officer for the Yuma Sector Communications Division, said once the occupants had been contacted, the second agent who arrived on scene got a fire extinguisher from his patrol vehicle and joined the supervisory agent in trying to keep the fire from spreading.

Rural/Metro firefighters arrived minutes later and safely removed the two occupants from the house. No one was injured in the incident.

By then, part of the home had also became engulfed in flames, with the fire spreading from the garage into the laundry room of the house, where it was quickly extinguished by firefighters.