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Family credits Good Samaritan with saving their lives |
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Thursday, 17 December 2009 |
 Harry Butterbredt, III and his father, Harry Butterbredt, Jr. credit their being alive today to the heroic and selfless actions of Roland Duckey who roused the Butterbredts out of bed as a fire raged just feet from their beds early Wednesday, Dec. 9. Photo by Mike Bodine By Mike Bodine
Register Staff
12-17-2009 The tragic loss of a home in Big Pine could have been deadly if not for a courageous neighbor.
“Roland Duckey is our hero,” Vanessa Charley said Monday. Charley, along with her two sons, husband and father were asleep and totally unaware that a fire blazed just feet from them.
Harry Butterbredt, Jr. and son Harry III were asleep in a travel trailer with flames just inches away when Duckey woke them both up.
Charley called Duckey an angel who was “at the right place at the right time.”
According to Charley, Duckey was on his way to work when he saw a strange glow coming from the corner of Bartell and Richard, not Blake and Richard as earlier reported.
“I think most people would have just gone to work, but he didn’t,” Charley said, adding that she knows Duckey, but they were not necessarily friends.
Butterbredt III said that the flames were quickly moving in on the trailer he and his father were sleeping in when Duckey woke them up. Buttertbredt said that if Duckey hadn’t shown up when he did, the trailer would surely have caught fire and the two of them wouldn’t have made it out alive.
Cleveland Charley, a 83-year old life-long mechanic who liked to collect tools and work on items in the yard, evacuated the dwelling, but headed back in for more of his possessions, where he fell.
Duckey, still on scene, and Josh Bacoch dragged Cleveland from the house. By that time the smoke was at waist level and the windows were starting to pop from the heat, even though it was only 6 degrees outside that evening, Vanessa Charley added.
Nothing is left on the property but the frames of the trailers and a few keepsakes that made it through the fire.
“We lost everything,” Vanessa Charley said.
She said she barely got out with the clothes on her back. Butterbredt III said he lost more than $2,000 in carpentry tools he was using to study carpentry through the TANF program.
Cleveland Charley lost several chain saws, a table saw, air compressors and countless tools.
Vanessa Charley said the community has come together and is helping them get by day-to-day along with help from TANF. She said she has trouble sleeping at night and knows that Duckey is still shell-shocked from the ordeal.
This family has lost everything but its spirit, however donations to support the family are gladly being accepted at Union Bank of California under the name “Cleveland Charley.”
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Last Updated ( Thursday, 07 January 2010 )
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