SOUTH DAYTONA, Fla. --
WFTV talked to two eyewitnesses who say they rescued a wheelchair-bound hoarder from her burning house in South Daytona. The place was so full of stuff, they could barely find her inside.
Fire gutted the house on Millbrook Lane on Monday, and destroyed everything inside, but the woman who lived there survived thanks to the efforts of a couple men who were working a block away.
"We were pounding on the door, pounding on the door. Nobody answering. We tried to kick open that front door so many times, man," Bobby Belz told WFTV.
Belz didn't think anyone was home at first, but he knew Adrienne McDonald lived there with just her cats, so he kept yelling.
"I kept hoping there was nobody in there and kept yelling, "Anybody in there?" And you could hear her yelling from the garage, "Hello! Hello!" Belz said. "We started moving stuff away as fast as we can. I said, 'Get back, we're going to kick this door in.' She said, 'OK.' I mean, she was sitting in the garage in this wheelchair with nowhere to move."
Firefighters later learned McDonald was sitting in the only path that weaved through her house in between all her things.
"There was so much inside, firefighters couldn't even get the front door open. They had to break out the center of the door. And they discovered all the other doors were blocked the same way. Only the door on the side of the house, the one rescuers came through, was actually clear enough to open and close," Belz said.
McDonald was yelling something about the electric breakers when she was rescued, but firefighters are still investigating the cause.
The fire department said the house was a total loss.
The woman refused medical treatment, but the city asked the Red Cross and Council on Aging to help her Monday night.
Copyright 2010 by wftv.com. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
