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No one was hurt in the blaze, thanks to Clinton McCullough, Dustin Derham, both 18, and Jerrod Phipps, 19, who passed by the house “just before the fire really started to take off,” said Assistant Fire Chief Jim Multhaup, who called them “real heroes.”
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Firefighters assess the damage at 476 Main St. in Winona Thursday morning after the duplex caught fire. No one was injured in the blaze that damaged the first and second floors on the west side of the house and a vehicle. (Photo by Paul Solberg/Winona Daily News) |
The men drove by twice to determine if flaming garbage containers were under control. When the porch ignited, they jumped out of their car to warn the sleeping people inside.
“We started beating the door and yelling, and we couldn’t see because the smoke was too thick,” McCullough said. “We went around to the back and finally started hitting the air conditioners in the windows.”
Within two minutes, all four occupants were out. Around 30 seconds later, the wind changed and the fire took off, Derham said.
Firefighters arrived at the duplex at 476 Main St. at about 1:15 a.m. and found the northwest portion of the house fully engulfed.
A crowd of mostly Winona State University students stood beside Newport on the lawn near Memorial Hall across the street, watching the Winona Fire Department firefighters kick down the doors and extinguish the blaze.
The fire burned the front half of the house and engulfed a Saturn vehicle, owned by the home’s renter, parked in the driveway.
Firefighters extinguished the fire and cleared the scene by 5:30 a.m. The house sustained heavy damage to the first and second levels on the west side, and the rest of the home was damaged by smoke, Multhaup said. He said he didn’t think the house would be a total loss, but the car parked in the driveway was destroyed.
A neighboring house sustained minor damage because the fire was hot enough to crack some of the windows, Winona Police Deputy Chief Paul Bostrack said.
The fire department is still trying to determine what inside the trash cans started the blaze, Multhaup said.
Reporter Kevin Behr contributed to this report.
