Thanks To Passerby, 2 Escape Fire On Main Street In Oxford
OXFORD (CBS) -- Crews battled a fire that tore through a building housing a hair salon on Main Street Monday morning.
Oxford Fire Chief Sheri Bemis said a person walking by noticed the flames and called in the fire around 2:18 a.m. Monday.
There are two apartments above the salon, where two tenants were asleep at the time.
Smoke alarms were going off, and that passerby was throwing rocks at the windows to wake them up. They got out safely.
Tammy Miller, one of the residents, was counting her blessings Monday for a knock on the door just after 2 a.m.
"Heard the alarm go off, but I'm a deep sleeper, thought it was an alarm clock. Then I heard somebody banging on the door and saying 'Fire, fire, get out!,' " Miller said.
Miller added that person was a complete stranger, a passer-by who woke her up just in time to escape her apartment as a fire raged down below inside the hair salon.
"There were flames shooting out of the salon. It was that quick. The building just went up."
When firefighters reached the second floor of the building, they found themselves in trouble and sounded a mayday.
"Fire alarm to command, switching to Orange…call it a Mayday," according to scanner audio from broadcastify.com
"The heat was very very intense on that second floor," said Chief Bemis. "They got into a room and could not find their way out of the room initially. The room next to them did flash over, and there was concern about the room they were in, but they were able to get out of the windows safely."
The firefighters made it out safely. So, too, did Tammy Miller, along with 2 family heirlooms. Furniture built by her father, storing pillows and quilts hand-stitched by her mother.
"They were in 2 different rooms. They are the only things that survived, so I feel like my dad and my mom were looking out for me," Miller said.
Nobody was injured, but the firefighters were checked out as a precaution.
The fire is believed to have started in the Shagged Hair Salon, possibly electrical in nature. But a definitive cause has not been determined yet.
A GoFundMe page has been established to help the owners of the hair salon move to a new location in Oxford. It already has amassed more than $4,000.
WBZ NewsRadio 1030's Lana Jones reports
