A man saved his neighbor’s life Monday night after an explosion and fire rocked a neighborhood west of Glen Alpine.
Bystanders told fire investigators a man was outside of his home at 3295 Lytle Drive trying to fill a gas tank when it exploded around 9 p.m. Monday, said Matt Chapman, fire inspector for Burke County. The explosion started a fire and severely burned the house.
Johnnie Rutherford was cleaning his porch next door.
“I heard a big explosion,” Rutherford said. “I looked and said, ‘Who’s shooting a cannon off in this neighborhood?’ Then I looked again. And boom, a big blaze of fire. Then I looked and that boy was hollering, running around the corner.”
Bystanders told fire investigators a man was trying to put some kind of gas into a tank Monday night when it exploded. The fire severely damaged the house.
The man was covered from head-to-toe in flames, Rutherford said.
“I knocked him down,” he said. “I told him to lay down and roll over. He was all out of it.”
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He added, “I knocked him down, took his shirt, put him out, rolled him over and put him out.”
The man, Devan Lane, was flown by helicopter to a hospital and has third-degree burns on 35% of his body, his wife, Krista Phillips, said Tuesday morning.
“It’s very, very difficult,” Phillips said. “We was in between jobs anyways. I had just lost my job of five years on the 28th, so we was already going through it. And now our home is gone and that’s everything we’ve built for five, six years now.”
She said this is the second home Lane has lived in that has burned.
The man’s wife and three children were not home at the time.
The couple have a 12-year-old daughter, 7-year-old son and a 2-year-old son, Phillips said. Lane was the only one home when the fire started.
She said several people have reached out to see if they can help with clothes for the family.
“I couldn’t do it if I didn’t have help from everybody,” Phillips said.
As for Rutherford, his mother, Rosa, and grandson, Nick Bell, are calling him a hero.
“He’s a hero, for real,” Bell said. “He could’ve died. He really could’ve died.”
Rutherford said he doesn’t think he’s a hero. “I’m just blessed to help somebody,” he said.
West End, Glen Alpine and Brendletown fire departments all responded to the scene along with Burke County EMS, the Burke County Sheriff’s Office, and the Burke County Fire Marshal’s Office.
Chrissy Murphy is a staff writer and can be reached at cmurphy@morganton.com or at 828-432-8941. Follow @cmurphyMNH on Twitter.