HERO: Tow Truck Driver Warns Family of Fire (TN)

[TowForce]

Bystander acts quick to help Robertson County family during overnight fire

 

Thanks to the quick actions of a family member and a complete stranger kept everyone who lived there from being injured.

 

CROSS PLAINS, Tenn. (WSMV) - A family in Robertson County is nearly starting from scratch following an overnight fire early Sunday morning.

Thanks to the quick actions of a family member and a complete stranger, they kept everyone who lived there from being injured.

“I kept hearing popping noises and stuff,” Jean Dudley said.

Dudley says she woke up just after 2 a.m. Sunday thinking her TV was still on. She said it was, and she quickly shut it off, but the noises didn’t stop.

Her son then saw smoke and headed outside to see what was going on.

“He could see fire on the deck,” Dudley said. “He immediately grabbed the hose and tried to spray it down.”

Her son ran back inside the back of the home working to get everybody out of the house as the fire was spreading quickly. Little to his knowledge, there was another person on the front side of the house trying to get inside.

“A gentleman banged on the front door, and I was really confused like, who would be knocking on my door at this time of night? It was a tow truck driver coming from the north, and he actually saw flames shooting out of the roof,” Dudley said.

She said she’d ask the man who he was, and why he was on her front doorstep.

“He goes, ‘I’m the tow truck driver,’” Dudley recalled. “That was confusing too. But he goes, I used to be a firefighter, you need to get out of your house now.”

Jean said that the tow truck driver worked hand-in-hand with her son to get herself, her husband, and their dog out of the home before firefighters arrived.

“About five minutes or so, there was no going back in for anything,” Dudley said.

Jean says they’ve mostly lost everything from her tax business filings to her husband’s 3D printing business. They’re still waiting on insurance to survey their home, but for now, they have nothing more than the clothes on their back, their vehicles, and the support of those around them.

“I have nothing but high praise and so many thanks for him because he was a hero,” Dudley said of the bystander.

Dudley says fire officials believe the cause of the fire was a grill on the back porch.

She says she wanted to thank the community who has shown her family support and love throughout their time of need.

They hope to rebuild on the land where the home currently sits. Dudley says it’s never going to be the same, but that land is home for them.

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