Neighbors Say 9-Year-Old Saved Them

OGLETHORPE COUNTY, Ga. -- At first, Josh McCannon's mom thought he had to be exaggerating.

"I asked him to calm down," said Megan McCannon. "I went outside to check everything out and I saw huge flames."

She saw just what Josh had seen, a brush fire burning in the distance, racing rapidly toward them and their neighbors.

The fire was quick, but Josh was faster. Before he got to his mom, he'd already alerted several neighbors.

"I ran so fast," says Josh. "I knocked (at the first house) and they didn't answer. I peeked through and said fire, fire, fire. They got their water hose and called 911."

The hoses were hardly a match for flames that were leaping 20 to 30 feet in the air.

Firefighters got to the R.G. Houser's Trailer Park in Oglethorpe County just in time to dig a trench and stop the flames just short of several homes.

Fire crews and neighbors agree if Josh had hesitated a minute, it would have been a disaster.

"He saved everybody in this trailer park," said Arnoldsville firefighter Walter Todd. "If it wasn't for that young 'un, I'm gone tell you there's twenty-two trailers that would probably be leveled to the ground right now."

"If it wasn't for him, I know of at least three babies that would have probably got torched up in a trailer," said neighbor Pete Waterson. "There's an old man and his wife, they're disabled, and it took twenty minutes to get them awoke."

Now, instead of staring at tragedy, Josh McCannon's neighbors are looking up to their pint sized protector.