AUSTIN, Texas — Four officers with the Austin Police Department rescued a 10-year-old girl from a fire at an apartment complex on Dec. 11.
According to APD, one of the 911 callers said that she and her daughter were trapped inside their unit.
Officers Brent Gray and Ana Aguilar and Sgt. Robert Gilbert all helped in rescuing the daughter from the balcony, while the Austin Fire Department used ladders to get the mother down. Cpl. Chadwick Honaker also assisted at the scene that night.
Almost two weeks later on Dec. 23, those fours officers talked about their experience with the fire.
"When you show up and you see the fire, you just have to evaluate what you have and you’re in the moment, you’re in work mode," Aguilar said. "You’re just trying to get everybody out, however it is you can get them out."
The other three officers echoed that sentiment, saying they were just doing their job and working with what training they had.
"Obviously it’s something we’re not trained to do," Gray said about responding to the fire. "Like everyone else has already said, in the moment you just act and do the best you can with what you have. At that point we just knew we needed to get everybody out."
Body cam footage from the APD officers who responded to the fire at the Costa Esmeralda apartments show them jumping into action as soon as they arrived on scene. One part shows an officer climbing on top of a fence to reach the 10-year-old girl and pull her down from the burning apartment while another instructs the girl on how to get out and takes her to safety away from the fire. The video then cuts to officers helping firefighters prop up a ladder to help the girl's mother down from the apartment.
"If it would have only been one of us on the scene there, I don’t think that it would have been successful," Gilbert said Thursday night. "But the fact that we were all there in order to help each other and then help the family get to safety, the teamwork that these guys all showed is incredible."
APD also said the family's cat was found safe that night near the apartment leasing office.
As a result of their actions, those four officers were nominated for Meritorious Service Medals, APD said.
But the officers didn't stop there. Just days ago, those same officers returned to help bring the family some Christmas joy after the mother and daughter lost their home in the fire.
"Beyond that it was just something that we wanted to do for the family just kind of going into the Christmas holiday season," Honaker said. "Knowing that they lost everything that they had, so we just wanted to kind of get some gifts together to kind of give a 10-year-old girl holiday spirit."
The early-morning fire broke out at the Costa Esmeralda apartments on East Anderson Lane and spread to four units. Both APD and AFD assisted with evacuation and rescues from residents on balconies. Five apartment residents and four firefighters were treated for smoke inhalation.
Thirteen residents and a couple of pets were displaced by the fire that night. The cause of the fire is still under investigation.
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