By MELISSA SANCHEZ 
Fort Worth Star Telegram

DALLAS - Veteran Dallas firefighter Stewart Wall says he doesn't remember almost dying on the morning of Sept. 18.

Wall, 43, had bolted up to the second floor of a Dallas apartment complex, where a mother and two children were said to be, when a roof collapsed on him and a rookie firefighter. Wall pushed the rookie to safety, but he suffered third-degree burns to his hands and second-degree burns to his face, and his lungs were charred from smoke inhalation.

He was revived by CPR at the scene and spent five weeks in the hospital.

No mother and children were ever trapped in the apartment.

But Wall would do it again in a heartbeat.

"I'm a fireman," he said. "This is all part of it."

Nearly 200 friends, family members and fellow firefighters honored Wall at a reception at Station 43 on Thursday. He was released from the hospital Nov. 1, and his wife calls him a miracle.

"He knows he is," Glee Wall said. "He calls himself the second Lazarus."

Glee Wall was in the kitchen making breakfast when she got a phone call from the hospital Sept. 18. A nurse said her husband had been injured and wanted to speak to her.

"He told me 'I'm OK. I'm going to be fine,' " Glee Wall said.

But when she got to the hospital, doctors told her the burns to his lungs were much more severe. Wall was in a drug-induced coma for about three weeks and then he was in and out of consciousness, Glee Wall said. He developed pneumonia and was on life-support. All the while, his wife was by his side.

Wall's children, Josh, 5, and Joy, 6, were not allowed to see their father hooked up to seven IVs, Glee Wall said. Instead, they were told that their dad had bad smoke in his lungs and was at the hospital getting better. Wall said they handled it surprisingly well.

Stewart Wall is now in rehabilitation so the skin on his burned hand won't tighten up. He walks on the treadmill, lifts weights and is trying to fully recover. He may be able to return to work by February and most likely will have a position that is safe for his lungs, Wall said.

"A lot of people were praying for me," he said.

"And this was a miracle that was granted."