KANSAS CITY, Mo, -- A man tried to put out a fire in a neighbor’s unit at the Armour Oaks Senior Living Community on Sunday.
Dennis Lafferty was visiting his mother who lives in the Garden Villas at the Armour Oaks Senior Living Community when someone knocked on her door.
“The neighbor, Janet, came over and knocked on the door and said my house is on fire please help,” said Lafferty.
He ran over to see what he could do to put the fire out.
"Hooked up the water crawled in the front door, it was bad,” said Lafferty.
Lafferty says when he crawled in the fire was growing too quickly and the smoke was too thick.
“Came right back out and made sure they called 911 it wasn't anything I could handle,” he said.
"My concern was that it was going to leap from one building to another, I know that's always a concern,” said Judy Cornes, who lives in a nearby unit.
While he waited for firefighters to arrive, Lafferty tried to keep it from spreading to the other units in the triplex.
"So I went around back, hooked up that water hose and started squirting in the window which was on fire,” said Lafferty.
Firefighters arrived shortly after and quickly put out the fire.
Lafferty says he’s not sure if his efforts really helped stop the fire from spreading, but he knows that his mother’s neighbor was grateful that he tried.
"I don't know why I thought I could put it out if it was a little fire in the hallway but it wasn't. It was a big fire,” said Lafferty.
The fire chief says the complex is providing another unit to the couple who lived in the one that caught fire.
A neighbor says the woman was the only one home when the fire started and she got out okay. Her husband was out at the time.
The cause of the fire is under investigation.
