Overnight fire on North Hagler

A house fire in northwest Fresno nearly took everything.

It started just after midnight, on the 400 block of North Hagler, but quick thinking from a trio of Fresno Police officers now has them being called heroes.

Charred furniture and busted out windows, tell just a piece of what happened when this northwest Fresno home, caught fire overnight.

"I looked out the window, and I just saw flames everywhere on this house in the front," Hunter Swearingen, a neighbor, said.

Swearingen lives across the street and called 911. He says it took just a couple minutes for police to respond.

"You could see the flames coming out of the front of the house, over here by the front door," Sgt. Diana Trueba, with the Fresno PD, said.

Sgt. Trueba was one of the three officers who got there first.

"I heard a female’s voice yelling, saying there was somebody trapped inside," Sgt. Trueba said.

That somebody, was a wheelchair-bound man. Sgt. Trueba says, without hesitating, she and officers Sean Cowart and Jeremy Demoss ran to the back of the house, despite having no equipment and no protection.

"It’s a little bit surreal, you know, every time you go in. You feel like you can’t breathe. But once I heard that person inside, we knew there was no turning back. We don’t have time to spare and wait for anybody else. We need to go in," Sgt. Trueba said.

The officers dragged the man to safety. Heroes, truly, but Trueba says that’s not the case.

"I was thinking about safety, but I wasn’t thinking about my safety. I was thinking about the gentleman’s safety. The fact that I could see the wheelchair there, my partners and I could see the wheelchair, we could hear the gentleman inside. I just grabbed a deep breath and went right in," Sgt. Trueba said.

Sergeant Trueba did need to be checked out at the hospital, for smoke inhalation.

"I got a little bit of a sore throat, but I’m doing good," Sgt. Trueba said.

A damage estimate is unknown, but for these residents, five lives saved, is worth so much more.

Hunter also tells us, a next door neighbor actually helped get a head start on putting out those flames. Once on scene the fire department finished the job. A cause is unknown.