By Will Greenlee
Treasure Coast News
MIAMI — A day of relaxation in South Florida wound up being more like a day on the job for a Stuart firefighter who said he raced to an apartment that caught fire.
Troy Sheets, a firefighter for nine years with the Stuart Fire Department, said he and a friend, a surf shop owner, took a day trip on Friday to the South Beach area in Miami-Dade County. Plans included walking around and watching the Miami Heat.
“As soon as we parked the car, he went to pay the toll and I got out of the car and I just look across the street and I happened to see flames just starting to ignite in a second story apartment,” Sheets said Saturday. “It was the weirdest thing. Just at that second I saw it just take off.”
Sheets, 50, is on short term disability while rehabilitating his shoulder after surgery. Still, he took action, telling his friend to call 911 and running toward the apartment.
“I knew that it had just started, it was just such a freak thing,” Sheets said. “I ran over there and ran right up to the second floor apartment and started banging on the door and the window telling everybody if anybody was there to get out.”
He banged on two other apartments upstairs and got an older gentleman out.
Sheets said he kicked in the glass door to the original apartment, but no one was inside.
He described it as a typical structure fire in a building.
“It would have been a lot hotter in there had I not broken the window,” Sheets said.
Sheets said he and his friend knocked on the doors of the downstairs apartments to alert residents.
The only person home at the time was the older gentleman on the second floor.
Sheets said he didn’t know what started the fire, but said the Miami Beach Fire Department extinguished it fairly quickly.
Sheets said the events of the day gave him a different perspective.
“I usually don’t see the fires when they start,” Sheets said. “We show up, so it was wonderful to actually be there and realize how long it seems ... before the fire department gets there and it was only probably three minutes.”
He said seeing the personnel and truck show up gave him an idea of “what I look like when I do my job.”
Copyright 2018 Treasure Coast News
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