Passerby plays key role in fire rescue

A fortuitous trip to a local convenience store helped fit Joshua Eagle with a hero’s cap Tuesday evening.
Eagle, a Pittsburg resident who was visiting a friend in Iola this week, was the first on the scene of a fire that damaged the home of Hugh Conover at 706 N. Walnut St.
He had been driving by the house after purchasing a soda at Pump ’N Pete’s on North State Street just as the fire was being reported.
“I had my window down and I could see the thick smoke; too thick for something from a wood stove,” Eagle told the Register in a telephone interview.
That was when he noticed the distinctive smell of a charred house.
“Our house burned when I was a kid, so I immediately knew the smell,” Eagle said. “That’s when I knew something was happening.”
Conover and another woman were in the house when the fire started. Eagle said he saw the woman on the phone calling authorities.
“She was pretty panicked, so I went in the house to see if anybody else was in there,” he said.
The smoke had yet to accumulate in the first floor of the home — the fire was contained to an upstairs loft and attic — but Eagle could tell quickly that the fire was too much to extinguish without the help of firefighters.
Eagle assisted Conover out of the home, moved his car out of the way so fire trucks could get to the blaze, then made another quick trip inside to scare out Conover’s pet cats.
“I know the last thing you want to do when a house is burning is go back inside for things like a TV or computer, but when things are so frantic, you never know if somebody may have been forgotten,” he said. “It only took a few seconds.”
As Eagle chased out the cats, smoke was wafting into the lower levels, so he left the house for good.
As firefighters arrived and began checking the fire victims and battling the blaze, Eagle knew he would be of little more service, so he left the scene.
There were no injuries, although Eagle realized afterward he inhaled smoke.
“I’m better now,” he said.
A Buffalo native, Eagle, 23, is studying automotive technology at Pittsburg State University. He’s also a member of the Kansas Army National Guard’s 772nd Engineering Company, which is under the umbrella of the 891st Engineer Battalion headquartered in Iola.
“I’ve got family that lives up here, and I work with quite a few people from Iola,” he said.