Wednesday, April 2, 2003
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Wednesday, April 2, 2003 |
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Firefighter uses garden hose to put out neighbor's house fire By JOHN MUNFORD
Jerry Momon woke up in the wee hours of last Wednesday morning after hearing a loud, constant banging noise coming from across the street. When he peeked out his window to see the ruckus, he saw flames shooting out his neighbor's top floor window and a woman frantically beating on the door and hollering to wake up those inside. Momon, a 23-year veteran Atlanta firefighter who lives on North Creek Trail in east Fayette, "threw on some clothes" and dashed across the street, worried that neighbor Cheryl Mullikin was fast asleep and in serious danger. He later learned that Cheryl was out of town and her husband Mike, who was inside, was just becoming aware of the flames. Momon relied on his vast firefighting experience to use an everyday garden hose to put out the fire, which heavily damaged the home's study, shooting flames into the ceiling. Momon had to keep an eye out on the ceiling to make sure the fire didn't reach the attic, which could have caused a "flashover" and seriously hurt or killed him. "Sometimes people would be surprised what you could do with a real small one," Momon said of the garden hose. "I was thinking I could keep it (the fire) down as much as I could until the fire department got there." He kept the water spray aimed at the base of the fire instead of trying to wet the entire study, where the fire erupted. The smoke was thick, but he kept to the floor so it was easier to breathe. "Three gulps of thick smoke like that and you're going down," Momon said. It also got "pretty hot," he added, particularly because he wasn't wearing any of his protective firefighting gear at the time. "The way that fire was looking I just figured I didn't have enough time to put it on," Momon said. "At that point I was worried about Cheryl, especially after I had seen the flames kinda shooting out the window. I saw her car and I was thinking, she wouldn't be able to get out." Mike Mullikin also helped out by closing the door and windows to the house to keep the fire from having more oxygen to feed on," Momon noted. If Momon hadn't acted quickly, the Mullikins might have lost their entire house and not just the study, which housed his computer, library and 25 years worth of model tanks in addition to other memorabilia. Some of the items may actually be saved with a little cleaning up thanks to Momon's quick response. The Mullikins were very appreciative of Momon's efforts. "He did a super job," said Cheryl Mullikin. "He was very professional and he took care of the problem," her husband added. Momon insists he was just being a good neighbor and doing what he was trained to do. "They're good people. I tried to do anything I could to help," Momon said. Mullikin was also appreciative of the woman who tried to alert her husband to the fire by banging on the door and shouting. The woman left the scene before the Mullikins could get her name, but they found out later that the woman was Lori Nyman, a sister of one of their neighbors in the subdivision. The fire started from a wastebasket where Mike Mullikin had just emptied an ashtray next to the computer, he said.
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