A garage fire earlier this month took an unexpected turn when two Unified Fire Authority firefighters caught on fire.
Firefighters Beau Fisher and Alex Thompson and one from Draper went into the garageand started to take out cans of gasoline to get away from the heat.
The next thing they knew, they heard a boom.
“All of a sudden, I hear, ‘woosh,’ and it gets real hot real fast, and I turn around, and I see Beau on fire,” Thompson told KSL. “I hear you are on fire and I look down and see my turnouts, my gloves, everything from the waist down just had flames all over it. It was a little scary.”
A bystander caught the scary moments on video as the pair caught on fire.
Fisher added: “I was covered in gasoline, so everything went up all at once. It started to get pretty hot as I noticed my hands were on fire. And, as it went up, I started to get pretty warm. My head was really, really hurting.”
Cpt. Kevin Wilkey with the Draper Fire Department helped get them out of the garage and extinguished the fire. He said if they had not cut access into the garage and had the hose lines pulled, this could have ended tragically, if not deadly.
“The fact that we were able to pull them out, that their turnouts were soaked in fuel and we didn’t send anyone to the burn unit is a miracle,” Wilkey said. “We probably would have two firefighters severely burned or wouldn’t have made it.
Fisher suffered some minor burns on his ear and neck, while Thompson received burns on the back of his legs. They both said they were so grateful for their fellow firefighters who jumped into action to save them.
“Those guys were so quick to drop what they were doing and run over and help me,” Fisher said.
Everyone just takes care of each other no matter what,” Thompson said.
“The (fire department) patch doesn’t matter. We are all going for the same job, we have the same goals, and all of us want to go home,” Wilkey added.
Before that day Fisher and Thompson had never met, now they are best of friends.
