Couple rescues man from burning home

The front of a home was engulfed in flames when Tina Pfahler ran to the back to help a 75-year-old man escape.

“I really ran,” Pfahler said. “I haven’t run for several years, but I really ran.”

About 7:30 p.m. Pfahler and her husband, Lloyd, were leaving his mother’s home after a visit, and Tina smelled smoke, she said.

The closer they traveled to the intersection of Saw Mill Drive, Revere and Terrell lanes in North Ridgeville, Tina saw more smoke, and then flames, she said.

“I could see the guy in the house because the lights were on,” Tina said.

“So my wife said, ‘We have to pull over and get him out,’ so we did,” Lloyd said.

“The whole front looked like it was engulfed,” Tina said. “There was a back patio area. I ran back there. It was the first time I ran in four years. I was really running.”

The Pfahlers did not know the man they identified as Roger.

He told them no one else was in the home, they said.

Neighbors Skip and Barbara Miller offered Roger a chair to sit in, water to drink, and a jacket to keep him from going into shock, they said.

“We live here,” Skip Miller said. “We would see him go out and get the mail. He would be inside most of the time. We heard the explosions. When we got out here, they were bringing him around. He had motorcycles in the garage, and the fuel tanks were exploding.”

Roger’s glasses were covered in smoke and he could not see out of them, Tina Pfahler said, so her husband cleaned them for him.

Gary Jakomin, who lives on Ashfield Way, said he was visiting a friend.

“One of the guys was coming back and said there was a house on Revere on fire,” Jakomin said. “We walked back. We could see the flames shooting through the roof. We don’t know how it started. It looks like it started in the garage.”

North Ridgeville Fire Chief John Reese said multiple departments responded to the fire alarm, including Avon, Elyria, North Olmsted, and Olmsted Falls.

The fire is under investigation, Reese said, and a cause is yet to be determined.

Lloyd Pfahler said Roger told them he noticed smoke.

“He went to the garage and saw the flames and reached for his fire extinguisher,” Lloyd said. “But that’s when the power went out and in the dark he couldn’t see what to do with the fire extinguisher. He couldn’t see the strap to pull it. He panicked and went back into the house.”

Tina Pfahler, who works for Verizon as an inventory coordinator, said she is not a hero.

PHOTOS BY CAROL HARPER — THE MORNING JOURNAL Firefighters extinguished a blaze about 7:30 p.m. Oct. 12 at this home at the intersection of Saw Mill Drive, and Terrell Lane in North Ridgeville. A resident of the home was taken to the hospital because of smoke inhalation, neighbors said.

Lloyd and Tina Pfahler rescued a 75-year-old man from his burning home about 7:30 p.m. Oct. 12 in North Ridgeville.