‘He was a hero that day’: Off-duty firefighter helps to put out garage fire in Cameron Park home
By Peyton Headlee
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CAMERON PARK, California (KCRA) — A Cameron Park family says they are grateful for their neighbor, a firefighter, who helped them after their house caught on fire.
The fire broke out on Monday morning in the garage of Cohl Weissmann’s Cameron Park home. Weissmann said he and his brother were asleep when the fire alarm went off.
“It started smoking, like going through the hallway. I started coughing. I yelled at my brother. He got up, started running,” Wiessmann said. “We ran out and we were half awake, so we were kind of like panicking.”
But, he said, they made it outside safely with their cat. That’s when help found them.
“Luckily, there is a guy off duty that was on his way to work. He came in to, like, kind of guide us,” Weissmann said. “He was like, grab your hose. My brother ran and grabbed the hose.”
Their neighbor, Jamesley Giblin, a firefighter with Cal Fire AEU’s Ponderosa Fire Crew, was on his way to work when he noticed the smoke.
“I just saw smoke in the middle of the morning and it just kept getting thicker and thicker,” Giblin said. “I was worried about the people inside. So, I wanted to go in and check them out and make sure they’re all good.”
Giblin made sure everyone was out safely and then used the garden hose to put out the flames.
“I’m glad that hose worked and knocked it out,” he said.
Shortly after Giblin put the flames out, more crews arrived.
“It only takes about five minutes to have the full garage be covered in smoke, where you can’t see anything in the fire to move quickly. So, if he wouldn’t have knocked it down by the time the engine got there, it could have been extended into the house or could have gotten everything inside the garage,” Ty Day, Captain of the Ponderosa Fire Center, said.
The family expressed their gratitude for Giblin’s quick actions.
“God bless him. Yeah, he was a hero that day.” Weissmann said. “I’m beyond blessed.”
While the fire was contained to the garage, the family says a lot of the house has smoke damage. It’s still unclear what caused the fire.
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