EDINBURG – Last Tuesday, three men became heroes.
Lloyd Miller, his son, Brett and John Laughlin, without thought of their own lives ran into the burning home of Charles and Ilda McInturff, carrying the elderly couple of safety.
“I was out feeding the lambs across the street by the roller rink when I saw John,” said Miller. “I stopped him and we were talking when we saw the smoke coming from the roof of the building.”
Not sure if the McInturffs were home, the two old friends first called 911 before running to the home to investigate.
“At the same time, my son, Brett had seen the same thing from our home,” said Miller of his son’s involvement with the rescue. “He was right behind us when we got the house.”
What the three saw was a fire engulfing the home as the flames had already reached the top of the house.
“Once we walked through the door, we found them in the kitchen,” said Brett as the structure of the house was built to have the kitchen as the main entrance. “With the fire the way it was, if the McInturffs were anywhere else in the house, I don’t think we could have gotten them out.”
Once inside the kitchen, Miller grabbed a jacket off the coat hanger as he recognized it as the one he’s seen Ilda wear as she collected her mail. Wrapping the coat around Ilda, he had Brett take her out of the house. But not before leaving, Brett made another call from inside the burning house.
“I dialed 911 from inside the house and then got Ilda out of the house,” said Brett.
The job of getting Charles McInturff out of the home fell on Miller and Laughlin.
“There was stuff falling down around us,” said Laughlin of his time inside the burning building. “Once we got to the gate outside the house, we heard a crashing sound as the ceiling fell through.”
Already outside with Ilda McInturff, Brett felt the “intensity of the heat.”
“When the ceiling fell,” said Brett. “Everything just magnified.” His father went so far as to compare the fire to a “powder keg that just exploded.”
With the McInturffs safely out of the house, and waiting for the arrival of the fire department and the rescue squads, the three men kept themselves busy by trying to keep Ilda from returning to the blaze.
“She just kept trying to go back into the house,” said Miller. “I kept telling her, ‘you can’t go back in there’. I later found out, through a friend, that she wanted her Bible.”
With the arrival of the emergency crews, their duty to help out a friend, a neighbor, another human being was over.
“We did what had to be done,” said Laughlin. “Anyone else would have done the same.”
Laughlin also took the time to reflect about his old college motto.
“The motto was, ‘not self but other’,” said Laughlin. “After I got home, I told my wife and realized how much it meant to me and was happy to be able to live it out.”
Hey, who brought the marshmellows?!
This a-frame house went up very fast... It happened the day before Thanksgiving. Fire department from Edinburg, Woodstock, Conicville and Mount Jackson, along with the rescue squad from Woodstock arrived for he fire and was obviously out of control and, unfortunately, a total loss.
With this photo is was pretty clear how close to the fire I got. When Heather and her family saw the photographs her asked if I used a telephoto lens for this shot. That's when Heather smacked me upside the head and said, "No, he didn't... He only uses the telephoto for sports." Evidently,, Heather doesn't like me getting too close... And I've got the knot on my head to prove it.
When the call came out for this fire it was a little after nine in the morning... It was a fire on the same road as the a-frame house, six days after so you'd think it was either a flare-up or one hell of a coincidence... It was less than a mile from the Wednesday night fire, but it was a new fire, with new dangers and more knots on my head.
To the left is an article I wrote for the newspaper about three men, Lloyd Miller, his son Brett and John Laughlin, who ran into the burning building to rescue the occupants...