Maury County firefighter saves partner after mayday call
MAURY COUNTY, Tenn. (WKRN) – A Maury County firefighter is lucky to be alive after he fell through the floor of a burning home Tuesday afternoon.
It happened this past Tuesday afternoon on Monsanto road, just outside of Columbia.
When firefighters arrived on Monsanto Road, they found a home fully engulfed in flames and saw cars in the driveway, as well as a walker on the front porch by the door.
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Firefighters, believing people could be trapped inside, broke down the door and went inside.
While battling the blaze, suddenly, one firefighter fell through the floor.
Officials said his legs were tangled in the flooring, and he was trapped with flames leaping all around him.
That’s when the firefighter made a mayday call.
“He tapped me on my leg when he fell through the hole, and he said, ‘Call for a mayday,'” firefighter Corey Fields said.
Mayday is a phrase indicating a life threatening emergency.
“I didn’t think to grab for my radio. I just yelled, ‘Mayday! Mayday! Mayday!’ Then I started my efforts to pull him out of the hole,” Fields recalled.
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Fields, a five-year veteran of the Maury County Fire Department, said he fell backwards in the deteriorating conditions as he pulled his partner from the hole, saying his fellow firefighter was easily trapped up to his hip, with his leg all the way through the floor.
“He was in a scorpion position, so one leg was tapping the back of his SCBA and the other leg was to the side a little bit,” Fields described.
Deputy Chief Richey Schatz of the Maury County Fire Department showed News 2 helmets worn by the firefighters inside the home.
Two of the helmets were charred black, almost to the point where there was no legible writing. The helmets almost appeared to have melted.
Schatz said the helmets were new and were bright, shiny red when the men wore them into the house, but because of their proximity to the flames, heat, and smoke, the helmets turned into briquettes.
“It’s not normal to darken a helmet to this level on a fire, but they were encountering intense heat,” Schatz said.
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Thankfully, none of the firefighters were seriously injured and there were no residents inside the house at the time of the fire.
The cause of the fire is still under investigation, but fire officials told News 2 it does not appear suspicious.
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