Fairfield police officer hailed as hero after saving house from fire with garden hose

FAIRFIELD – A Fairfield police officer is being hailed as a hero for saving a home from potential disaster on the Fourth of July.

Officer David Neal of the Fairfield Police Department was called to Sherwood Court that holiday evening because a garden fence had caught fire, possibly due to fireworks.

“When I got there, I was working fireworks patrol, responding to fire and fireworks calls,” Neal said. “The winds were really strong in Fairfield that night, as they always are, and I saw a lot of embers flying through the air.”

Neal noticed that the embers landed on the roof of the house across the street.

He rushed to the front door, his kind act was recorded by the doorbell camera, and he knocked to alert the homeowner.

However, no one answered.

“I just thought, ‘You know, here’s a garden hose, I’m going to take a hose and start spraying down their roof,'” Neal said.

He hosed down the roof until he was sure the embers had died down and the fire across the street was better controlled.

Thanks to his quick thinking, he was able to prevent a fire within a few minutes that could easily have started another fire.

“Fires start so quickly and houses burn so quickly, I just didn’t want that to happen,” Neal said.

The homeowner, Debra Allen, was able to personally thank Officer Neal at the Fairfield Police Station on Thursday.

“I’m so grateful. I appreciate this so much,” Allen said, hugging Neal.

She knows that given the heat and wind that night, it wouldn’t have taken much to set her house on fire.

“My house could have blown up. It was very scary,” Allen told CBS13.

Because of the Fourth of July holiday, she was out of town that evening.

She had lived in this house for 40 years and would have been devastated if it had caught fire.

“It’s very emotional. My husband died a few years ago. All his things are in there and that would have been the most important thing I would have lost,” Allen said.

She says Neal went above and beyond the call of duty and wanted to praise the officer whose humanity clearly transcended his badge.

“He didn’t have to do that. He wanted to save my house, and that’s just not possible, there are no words for it,” Allen said.

Her home was spared thanks to an officer who was in the right place at the right time and simply did the right thing.

“When you see a need, you just act. That’s what happened to me in this situation. I saw a need, I just stepped up and responded, as I hope anyone else would,” Neal said.