Oak Harbor firefighters pulled a 79-year-old woman from a house fire last week, just in time to save her life.
After getting the 911 call, it took firefighters less than three minutes to get to the Southeast Sixth Avenue residence, where they found the woman and her 92-year-old husband inside.
They were too late to save the man.
It would have been a double fatality, however, if the house was on the other side of town, according to Fire Chief Ray Merrill.
“She would be dead,” he said. “Absolutely. There is no doubt.”
In Oak Harbor, fire and medical response times is the longest for the southwest quadrant of the city, where most of the residential development is going. It averages about five minutes.