Jock (left) with his best mate, Matt.
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Contributed
When best mates Jock McAuliffe and Matt Eddy went out for a night-time cruise last Friday, April 25, little did they expect to find themselves at the centre of a particularly destructive fire incident in Cobram.
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“So I chucked a U-turn in my ute, ‘cos we thought we’d go have a look, and, sure enough, there’s flames coming out of the eave of the house.”
Jock hit the brakes, and he and his mate jumped out to find an apartment at the eastern end of Hay Ave wreathed in smoke and flames.
“We took it upon ourselves to go and look, checked around the back of the house, couldn’t see or hear anyone,” Jock, 22, said.
But then, as they returned to the front of the house, the pair heard a window smash.
“And as we got there, there was a man halfway out the window, passed out, half his body in the house, half his body outside of the house,” Jock said.
Thinking quickly, Jock handed his phone, which had its torch turned on, to his best mate so that he could see.
As smoke poured from the open window, Jock hauled the man to safety, taking care not to let the glass from the smashed window cut the man’s chest.
“He was passed out at that point, so he must have inhaled a bit of smoke,” Jock said.
“I picked him up a little bit, then dragged him away from the fire and all the smoke.
“The heat was that hot, I’d never experienced anything like that before. It was a bit of an adrenaline rush. Me and Matt both had our shirts over our faces.”
It was just in time, too: just 30 seconds later, the entire room went up in flames.
As he dragged the man out of harm’s way, Jock couldn’t see Matt even though his mate was just two metres away.
The fire was contained by 7.49pm.
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Owen Sinclair
“The smoke was that intense. I couldn’t breathe,” Jock said.
Despite his state, the man managed to convey to Jock that his dog was left behind in the burning apartment.
“I’d seen one of the other boys that were around, I’m not sure who they were, smashed a window with a rubbish bin. And the dog came running out,” Jock said.
Safely on the street away from the flames, the two best mates handed the care of the man over to Ambulance Victoria paramedics.
Ambulance Victoria later confirmed a man in his 50s had been taken to Goulburn Valley Health in Shepparton in a stable condition.
“It was definitely a team effort. I couldn’t have done it without Matt, and Matt couldn’t have done it without me,” Jock said.
“If Matt hadn’t spotted it, we would’ve just kept driving.
“It was one of the more intense situations I’ve been in in my whole life. But, at the end of the day, me and Matt didn’t really have a care over if we got hurt. I don’t know why, maybe it was the adrenaline. Our priority was to see if there was anyone in the house and, if there was, to get them out.”
