A father rushed into a burning home in Miami Gardens early Friday morning to save his son from a blaze that the family believes started from an e-bike.
The man, who didn’t want to be identified, said noise from the e-bike woke people up in the morning.
“A ‘tick, tick, boom,” he said. “Like that type of noise.”
He said the bike was not plugged into the wall. He said he got to work detaching the battery that was smoking, placed it on the ground, and then went to go open the front door, the situation became worse.
“I went to go back and go get the battery to bring it outside,” he said. “It’s like, the battery just made more noises. Then it just like sprayed, and then it just red, like, I just seen red, like fire,” he said. “I ran outside, my dad jumped over the counter, my brother ran outside because he heard the fire, and then my son was still in the house. I had to go back in there and go get my son.”
He ran back through the fire in the entryway to get his son, and got emotional talking about it.
Eighteen Miami-Dade Fire Rescue units responded to the scene.
But before that, Kathy, who lives in the unit attached to the main one that caught on fire, tried to jump in and help herself.
“As soon as I opened up the door, the whole neighborhood was full of smoke,” Kathy said. “So, I see my neighbors that the smoke was coming from, they were out and trying to put out the fire, and and just not thinking, I was like, ‘Hey, let me help you.’ I went and I turned on my my water hose to try to aim at their house, and they’re like, ‘No, no, don’t do it because it was already engulfed.’”
Kathy’s unit is damaged, too.
“The hallway has a big hole where they were concerned about a fire being there, my bathroom is totally like black with soot, and there’s a hole in my bathroom ceiling and the back room where the firewall,” she said.
Luckily, Kathy has insurance. The other unit does not.
The Red Cross was called to assist.
Three of the people inside of the home were treated for minor injuries, but no one went to the hospital.
The Miami-Dade Sheriff’s Office is continuing to investigate.
