{"id":96926,"date":"2020-03-13T10:03:09","date_gmt":"2020-03-13T14:03:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/?p=96926"},"modified":"2020-03-13T10:23:01","modified_gmt":"2020-03-13T14:23:01","slug":"soldier-rescues-woman-and-4-dogs-from-a-burning-house","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=96926","title":{"rendered":"Soldier rescues woman and 4 dogs from a burning house"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-96927 aligncenter\" src=\"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/03\/sgt-darren-watkins-300x247.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"247\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/03\/sgt-darren-watkins-300x247.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/03\/sgt-darren-watkins-768x631.jpg 768w, https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/03\/sgt-darren-watkins-405x333.jpg 405w, https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/03\/sgt-darren-watkins.jpg 1200w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><br \/>\n<em>Sgt. Darren Watkins, with the Oklahoma National Guard, saved an elderly woman and her four dogs from a deadly house fire. (Spc. Jessica Todd)<\/em><\/p>\n<p><strong>By: Todd South<\/strong><\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Sgt. Darren Watkins was starting a shift in his civilian job as a sheriff\u2019s deputy in Wagoner County, Oklahoma, on Feb. 29 after leaving a daddy-daughter dance with his youngest child.<\/p>\n<p>Things started slowly, as they often do. The Oklahoma Army National Guardsman with 2120th Engineer Battalion, 90th Troop Command answered some routine calls and filled out paperwork that night.<\/p>\n<p>Then, at about 4 a.m., as he was wrapping his shift, Watkins was called to a fire in a vacant house. When he arrived, he realized that a neighboring house was also aflame, and there was someone trapped inside.<\/p>\n<p>A man in the driveway alerted Watkins that an elderly widow was in the house and that he couldn\u2019t wake her to get her out. Watkins told the man to seek safety and radioed the 911 dispatch to tell them he was going to try and get inside the home.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI knew she was in there, and I knew she needed to get out,\u201d Watkins said in an Army statement. \u201cI really wasn\u2019t thinking of anything else.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Watkins rushed into the home and found that the woman had gone into her kitchen in an attempt to get to her car in the garage. However, a gasoline-filled car in the midst of a house fire poses a unique set of risks.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI had to actually hold the door closed to where she couldn\u2019t open it and pull her away from the door,\u201d Watkins said in a Guard video about the event. \u201cThe firefighters later said if she would have opened the door the fire in the garage would have flashed into the living room and possibly burned both of us.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The woman was panicking about her four dogs as Watkins tried to get her out of the home. He had to wrap his arms around her and steer her to the exit.<\/p>\n<p>He, the woman who was not identified in the Army statement, and the four dogs luckily made it to safety.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Bravo Zulu, SGT Watkins- damned well done! Read the entire article here: <a href=\"https:\/\/www.armytimes.com\/news\/your-army\/2020\/03\/12\/soldier-rescues-woman-and-4-dogs-from-a-burning-house\/\">Army Times<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Sgt. Darren Watkins, with the Oklahoma National Guard, saved an elderly woman and her four dogs &hellip; <a title=\"Soldier rescues woman and 4 dogs from a burning house\" class=\"hm-read-more\" href=\"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=96926\"><span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Soldier rescues woman and 4 dogs from a burning house<\/span>Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":657,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[359,410,389],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-96926","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-army","category-bravo-zulu","category-valor"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/96926","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/657"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=96926"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/96926\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":96929,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/96926\/revisions\/96929"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=96926"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=96926"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=96926"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}