AMHERST, Ohio — The family of an Amherst man is calling the actions of a police officer Monday “heroic.”
Mike Ireland spoke to News 5 Tuesday while he was taking his granddaughter to the Lorain County Fair. It was a trip he had been planning for several weeks.
“The girls said, ‘Should we go?’ And I said, ‘Julianna’s looking forward to this. There’s nothing I can do at the house. Let’s do what we had planned to do,’” Ireland said.
The 77-year-old grandfather explained his plans could have been derailed by the events from the previous day. He was about to shower and get ready for work Monday morning when he heard persistent knocking on the front door of his Amherst home.
“I couldn’t figure out what was going on, so I slipped my robe on and went to the front door,” Ireland recalled. “Officer Ford was there fortunately, and he said, ‘You’ve got to get out.’ And I said, ‘Well, why?’ I had no idea what was going on. He said, ‘The whole back of your house is on fire.’”
Neighbor Bonnie Woodward shared video with News 5 of the billowing smoke coming from Ireland’s Country Walk house around 8:30 a.m. Monday. Her dog alerted her that there was something wrong.
“He wouldn’t stop barking, so I went over to the door and I looked out. [I saw] nothing but smoke and flames at Mike’s house. It was horrible,” Woodward explained.
The thick smoke also caught the attention of Officer Greg Ford. A post on the Amherst Police Department’s Facebook page explained the officer was on routine patrol in the neighborhood when he spotted the black cloud. After calling for the fire department, the post said he immediately tried to make contact with anyone inside.
“He ran over there and he did everything, everything, to get that man out of that house. And it was actively, actively, burning,” Woodward said. “Then he ran over to the other neighbor’s house where the siding was melting and got her out. Then he ran over to Vinnie’s house and got him out.”
Ireland added, “I basically just sat in his cruiser for a couple of hours while the fire departments did their work. It was amazing to see how fast it just went up and ignited in a short period of time.”
The damage left behind by the fire demonstrated its magnitude. Ireland’s back deck was destroyed, and the fire ate through part of the top level of the two-story house, charring nearby trees and melting the siding on a neighboring home.
“We’ll have good memories of the house, but pretty much everything in there is destroyed,” he said.
Ireland and his wife built the house nearly two decades ago as their retirement home.
“It’s not been a great year for me. My wife passed away in the house in September from Alzheimer’s. We took care of her right at home,” he said. “How could you have that much bad luck in one year?”
Despite the misfortune from the past year, he said he considers himself lucky Ford was in the right place at the right time. His family and neighbors are calling the officer a hero for averting potential tragedy.
“He should be commended for that,” Woodward said.
Ireland said he’s grateful to have more time to spend with his family.
“I’m extremely appreciative. If he wouldn’t have been on the ball, who knows, it could’ve been a totally different disaster,” he said. “I’m very, very fortunate.”
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