{"id":41006,"date":"2024-01-16T20:25:08","date_gmt":"2024-01-17T01:25:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/?p=41006"},"modified":"2024-01-16T20:25:15","modified_gmt":"2024-01-17T01:25:15","slug":"city-of-lakeland-heroism-award","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/2024\/01\/16\/city-of-lakeland-heroism-award\/","title":{"rendered":"City of Lakeland Heroism Award"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

City of Lakeland Heroism Award Nominated by Douglas E. Riley, Lakeland Fire Department<\/a> Fire Chief to Michael Williams, Assistant Fire Chief<\/p>\n\n\n

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Presented by Shawn Sherrouse on Tuesday, January 16th, 2024<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On December 28, 2023, at approximately 5:00 pm Assistant Fire Chief Mike Williams and his wife Carol were traveling south on Interstate 75 near Ocala, Florida returning from a vacation. The couple witnessed several cars suddenly stop in the roadway directly in front of their vehicle. As they slowly moved forward, they noticed a full-size SUV in the tree-lined median of the interstate. The vehicle was involved in a high-speed accident, landing in the woods. The vehicle was visibly on fire from an apparent rupture of the fuel tank from the crash. Several people stood on the shoulder of the road, but no one approached the burning vehicle. Assistant Chief Williams rolled down his window and asked a bystander if everyone was out of the vehicle. The bystander replied: \u201cno\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mike then parked his truck and trailer on the interstate and retrieved a claw hammer from his toolbox. At this point, the fire had progressed, covering all sides of the vehicle. He approached the vehicle and broke the passenger front window allowing him to see a single occupant unresponsive in the driver\u2019s seat. Unable to reach the driver, he went through the woods to the driver\u2019s side of the SUV. After breaking the driver\u2019s window, he tried to rouse the driver, but he remained unconscious. Mike reached in through the broken window and grabbed the driver, attempting to pull him through the window opening. As he pulled the unresponsive victim through the window, the driver made it only halfway out when his seat belt pulled his waist back down into the vehicle. The fire continued to grow with a steady curtain of fire between the trapped driver and Chief Williams. He then reached through the window and into the car where he was finally able to unlock the driver\u2019s door. Mike grabbed the victim again by the torso and was able to pull him through the seatbelt and out of the vehicle. A bystander (off-duty trauma nurse) then assisted with dragging the victim a safe distance from the fire. At this point, no first responders had arrived yet on the scene.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

With the victim positioned at a safe distance from the burning vehicle, they began to conduct a patient assessment, finding that the victim sustained second and third-degree burns to both lower extremities and his posterior. He was cared for until the arrival of the Marion County Fire Department. During the process, Mike was unaware that he had sustained minor burns to both hands, face, and scalp. EMS evaluated his burns and treatment and Mike declined transport. The victim regained consciousness while being treated and was transported to the hospital due to his injuries. If not for the selfless and courageous actions of Chief Williams, the victim likely would have perished in the fire. I would like to acknowledge and commend Mike for his courageous actions while off-duty to save a life and exemplify the First Responder mindset of Service before Self. This is a true testament of what our Nation\u2019s First Responders do every day to protect the citizens that we are called to serve.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Source: https:\/\/www.wcjb.com\/…\/firefighters-respond-vehicle…\/<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

City of Lakeland Heroism Award Nominated by Douglas E. Riley, Lakeland Fire Department Fire Chief to Michael Williams, Assistant Fire Chief Presented by Shawn Sherrouse on Tuesday, January 16th, 2024… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":41007,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_seopress_robots_follow":"","_seopress_robots_imageindex":"","_seopress_robots_snippet":"","_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"0","_seopress_robots_breadcrumbs":"","_seopress_robots_freeze_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_custom_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_canonical":"","_seopress_social_fb_title":"","_seopress_social_fb_desc":"","_seopress_social_fb_img":"","_seopress_social_fb_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_height":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_title":"","_seopress_social_twitter_desc":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_height":0,"_seopress_redirections_value":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled_regex":"","_seopress_redirections_logged_status":"","_seopress_redirections_param":"","_seopress_redirections_type":0,"_seopress_analysis_target_kw":"","inline_featured_image":false,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"wpai_generated_summary":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"dois","default_image_id":71799,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_wpas_customize_per_network":false},"categories":[12,14],"tags":[7293],"class_list":["post-41006","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-local","category-news","tag-city-of-lakeland-heroism-award"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41006","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=41006"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41006\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":41008,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41006\/revisions\/41008"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/41007"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=41006"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=41006"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=41006"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}