'I don't think I'm a hero. I just think I'm a 9-year-old little kid,' Michael Neal says.
A young boy in Lancaster County put his fire safety lessons into action this week.He alerted his family to the overnight fire that was quickly spreading from a cottage to their rented farmhouse.When fire tore through the home early Tuesday morning in East Hempfield Township, the family was asleep.
The sound of a smoke alarm awakened one of them: 9-year-old Michael Neal.'After that I just went to my mom's room because I knew at school, the teacher said the first thing to do in a fire is to get help,' he said.'I'm just glad he wasn't scared where he hid or tried to investigate, and he knew to come to me. I was very proud of him,' said his mom, Kayla Powers.They made it through the smoke and out the front door of the home.'You couldn't see anything,' Powers said.Powers' husband went back in to rescue her 5-year-old son, Christopher, and her mom.All five are OK, and Neal is being hailed as a hero.'I don't think I'm a hero. I just think I'm a 9-year-old little kid,' he said.'Just a 9-year-old who knows what to do,' Powers said.The family is now staying in two rooms at the Heritage Hotel, courtesy of Joey Baker, the emergency recovery coordinator with Paul Davis Restoration 'I feel like I'm just on vacation, but also, I don't think about it. I just feel like I'm on vacation at the beach,' Neal said.Powers, though, is feeling the stress. She's using the hotel washing machines to clean some salvaged clothing that smells like smoke and trying to figure out the next step.'It's very overwhelming because life still goes on. I have to still work. Kids still have to go to school. I'm still trying to get stuff out of the house. It's a lot to process,' she said.However, she knows they are lucky to have escaped the devastation.'If he wouldn't have woken up, we would have probably lost a lot more than just furniture and pots and pans and clothing,' she said.'And we probably would have died,' Neal said.But he's alive and well and still able to play his favorite video games. He's hoping to salvage his Xbox from the fire scene so he can meet up with friends on Minecraft.The cause of the fire has not yet been determined. The owner, Ron Metzler, said he plans to rebuild.
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