Quick-thinking boy, 11, survives horror apartment fire as crews battled blaze

25 November 2023 , 02:26

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Brave Khy'air McWherter smashed through a window to survive the building inferno (Image: abc13)

A quick-thinking 11-year-old survived a horrific apartment blaze as fire crews battled the flames.

Khy'air McWherter, from Clear Lake, Texas, was trapped in the residential building fearing for his life when the brave youngster started searching for ways to free himself. As fire crews battled to save four families trapped inside, McWherter said he knew he had to smash through a window to survive.

Describing his nightmare ordeal, the schoolboy said: "I woke up, and I smelled something - it smelled like a candle. So I opened the door, and I saw a massive fire. "I just thought there was nowhere else to go and let me break through the window...then I broke through the window, and someone came to help me get out of it."

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Witness Charles Harper was the hero who came to the boy's rescue. Harper had just pulled in to a nearby gas station when he saw the inferno before immediately running to the complex to start alerting residents.

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He said: "I started beating on doors, nobody was answering and at the last apartment there was boy that busted the window out and got my attention and ran over there and pulled him out."

Khy'air McWherter, who firefighters said happened to free himself of the building when he awoke and saw flames (abc13)

The early morning fire caught many residents off-guard. Andrew Priest said he was asleep when the fire started. Priest added: "I was woken up by the fire department, they had busted into my house and telling me there was a fire,” Priest said. “When I walked out of the closet it was just engulfed in smoke and the whole apartment; really scary."

Gracy Lane said her apartment was heavily damaged by water, reports click2Houston. Lane said: "Everything is black it’s so sodded, and everything is just ashy and it smells horrible. The first five minutes I showed up I couldn’t even breathe when I was in the house."

Lane said she is able to move into a vacant unit in the same apartment complex. HFD officials have not yet determined a cause of this fire. Two firefighters were taken to the hospital along with Khy'air, who had minor cuts after busting through an apartment window, officials said. Houston Fire Department officials said it happened at about 6:30am. on Pineloch near Galveston Road near Webster, with the cause still under investigation.

Houston Fire Department officials said it happened at about 6:30am. on Pineloch near Galveston Road near Webster, with the cause still under investigation, (Getty Images/iStockphoto)

Yesterday, reports emerged of five people killed in another residential blaze in Ohio. The fire started on Thursday morning in Athens County, according to a spokesperson for the Ohio State Fire Marshal’s Office. Firefighters were called to a residence along Rainbow Lake Road before the fire completely engulfed the building leaving structure heavily damaged.

Investigators are looking into the cause of the fire. The Thanksgiving tragedy comes a day after an explosion killed two people on the U.S - Canada border. The deadly blast rang out at a checkpoint on the American side of a US-Canada bridge in Niagara Falls, killing two and leaving a border officer injured and forcing the international border crossing to close in both directions.

Abigail O'Leary