‘Howard, your house is on fire’ Neighbors run into burning house to save neighbor

Shortly after 6 p.m. Monday evening, The Fort Myers Fire Department responded to a house fire on Arlington Street, and just moments before, neighbors took on the role as heroes and ran inside to save their neighbor known as Howard.

Travis Adams is only in town for spring training and heads to Kansas on Monday.

He said he didn’t know about his neighbor Howard until he heard a bang Monday afternoon and ran to his friend’s room to look out the window.

“He was like, ‘Dude, the house across streets is on fire’, I looked over. And then I ended up just running out of the house,” Adams said.

He said he immediately ran out of his home and across the street to see if anyone was inside and if they needed to be pulled out.

“I ran and kind of asked if, like, anyone was in the house and whatnot,” Adams said. “Like no one knew and so me and the guy went to the front door and started like knocking on it. And like someone had to break in the front window. And, like, I think they knew who was in there. He was yelling “Howard, your house is on fire, get out.”

• RELATED: Firefighter injured after Fort Myers house fire

Adams said he knew the next thing they had to do was anything and everything they could to pull Howard out, but it proved to be pretty difficult considering all of the things blocking the doorway.

“We couldn’t like get in. And so I had to go around. And let’s see, there’s another door. And so there was a door on the side. So I end up like tearing a little bit little part of the fence down and get back there and we end up getting the door open and kind of moving some stuff out of the way of that door and getting him out,” Adams said. “My goal was just to help him out of the house because I didn’t know like how much of the house is on fire or, you know, what was on fire. I saw a big old blaze and fire and smoke coming from the house.”

They eventually pulled Howard out, and although people are calling Adam and the 3 other neighbors who ran inside to save Howard, ‘heroes,’ he’s just calling himself a neighbor.

“I don’t really think of myself as a hero, but just tried to do as much as possible and did the right thing,” Adams said.

Fire officials confirmed the cause of the fire was an electrical fire.