RUMFORD — Police Sgt. Tracey Higley said he is doing fine after being treated for smoke inhalation from trying to learn if anyone was inside the burning Pellerin home on Hillside Avenue.

“It doesn’t matter who it is,” he said. “It’s our job to try and protect all the citizens. I was just worried that there was more than one person inside.”

Higley said he arrived first at 598 Hillside Ave. before firefighters.

“When I got there, I started talking to the people that had flagged me down, asking if there was any people inside. We need to be sure,” he said.

“There were flames coming out the front of the house, so I went to the side where there were no flames and no heat, and my training kicked in. So I broke a window, felt for heat, then I kicked the door in,” Higley said.

The first firefighters arrived at that point.

“I stood back and no smoke was coming out at first,” he said. “I was yelling and looking, but I stayed low and on ground level to try to see what I could see, but I couldn’t see anybody at ground level because there was so much smoke.

“I certainly wasn’t going inside,” Higley said. “I don’t think anyone with any common sense would have gone in. I was just hoping I was going to see someone close, but it was too hot.

“And then all of a sudden, the smoke came over me — that thick, black, hot smoke,” he said. That’s when he inhaled some and backed away.

“It wasn’t a lot,” Higley said.

“It wasn’t like I was inside the building. When the door first opened, stuff didn’t come out, and then when the oxygen got going and that’s when it came out,” he said.

Higley said he tried to gather more information about anyone who might be inside from a different neighbor and told firefighters he hadn’t seen anyone inside.

“That was all the talking I could do, so I just waited for the ambulance service to get there to get me some oxygen and get the smoke rinsed out,” he said. “It wasn’t like I inhaled a lot of it. It was just enough to make it a little tough to breathe,” Higley said.

“Not a big deal. It really isn’t. We do what we’ve got to do, but we’re not firefighters. We’re cops,” he said

tkarkos@sunjournal.com

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