OVIEDO, Fla. – The Oviedo fire chief said the actions of three middle school students Sunday afternoon helped prevent a brush fire from spreading.
Chief Lars White said when it’s dry fire it moves fast, something the fire department knows well from the Live Oak brush fire a few weeks ago that burned at 40 acres per hour.
The three Jackson Heights Middle School students were walking in the Canterbury Cove neighborhood at 4 p.m. when they smelled the fire coming from a wooded area behind the sub division.
“We were walking down the street to go to my friend’s house and we started smelling smoke,” Joshua Melendez said.
The teens said they quickly went up to a nearby construction site in the and asked for water to put out the fire.
“When we got there it was really small,” Melendez said. “With the wind it was spreading extremely fast and the flames were really big.”
With each minute, the fire grew, Melendez said.
Brian Lopez said he was happy nothing happened to nearby homes and that no one was hurt.
Neighbors are calling the boys heroes for their actions.
“I think they saved the neighborhood,” neighbor Debbra Dorsey said. “Because with the wind and the fire it goes really fast and nowadays you don’t have time to think, you just have to do.”
The teens said they don’t feel like heroes, but credit the Oviedo Fire Department for what they do every day.
“We’re just seventh graders trying to help out a bad situation,” Lopez said.
White told News 6 on the phone that the boys did everything right, by calling 911 first.
White said, right now, in the dry season, the fire department has additional resources and more water ready to respond to fires like this.
Fire crews have been battling more than 100 brush fires across Florida during the past two months.