City honors fire heroes
Published: May 1, 2007
The city recognized two local heroes Friday for acts of bravery that saved lives. And it seemed fitting that the ceremony was held at the fire station.
On April 2, cries for help brought Keith Hill and Clarence Harris to 1101 Oklahoma St. and the site of a raging house fire.
Trapped inside the house were an infant, a mother and a grandmother.
“We knew we had to do something,” Harris said. “We had to get them out of there. We weren’t really thinking about what we had to do, we just did it,” he said.
They rescued the trapped family of three.
Harris climbed a ladder to rescue the grandmother and said he had to pull her through a window.
“If I didn’t go up that ladder, I think she might have died,” he said.
Hill and Harris were given Certificates of Appreciation for their bravery from Mayor Rudy Clay on behalf of the city.
“They could have kept going, but they didn’t,” Clay said. “They stopped, went in this house and saved lives.”
Clay said their actions made the city of Gary proud.
“What you did proves that we have great people,” he said.
Both Hill and Harris said, after it was over, they couldn’t believe they had saved people from a burning building.
“Do you believe what we just did?” Harris recalled saying to Hill.
Hill said he was relieved the family survived. He lost his own two children in a fire in 2001 in the Delaney Community Housing Development.
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