Rescuer pulls sleeping friend from fire

By ROSALIND HELDERMAN

© St. Petersburg Times, published July 11, 2000

ST. PETERSBURG -- Johnny Wright says he wasn't being brave when he stormed up the stairs of a burning building Monday and dragged his friend John Tierney out the door.

He simply was afraid his friend, who was napping, might sleep through the whole thing.

Sure enough, Tierney says he had no idea the garage below his apartment was engulfed in flames until Wright showed up. "I never would have seen nothing if he hadn't woken me up. He saved my life," Tierney said, as he watched firefighters pull down the charred walls of his destroyed garage apartment at 468H 11th Ave. N. He has rented the apartment for two years. A vacant apartment next door was undamaged.

"It was everything I've owned for two years," said the 55-year-old Vietnam veteran who says he is retired. Wright says Tierney is fortunate he happened to be there. Wright is moving from the neighborhood and dropped by Monday to pick up some of his things. But it was just the right time to save Tierney and his dog, Shy-Girl, who was tied up to the building at the time of the fire.

Firefighters said the fire was accidental. No one was injured. It started in the garage area, where earlier in the day Tierney and a friend had been doing repair work. No one had been in the garage in more than two hours, however, when the fire began.

When firefighters arrived, a propane tank attached to a grill stored in the garage was spraying fuel into the garage. "It was really feeding the fire," said Lt. Chris Bengivengo of St. Petersburg Fire and Rescue.

Propane tanks can automatically leak fuel when heated in order to prevent them from exploding, Bengivengo said, adding:"It's better that than that it explodes. It could have taken out the whole building." Bengivengo estimated at least $15,000 damage to the building. Tierney was turning to the American Red Cross for housing Monday night.

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