GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. (WOOD) – Brodrick McAfee was startled awake around 4 a.m. Tuesday to the sound of a smoke alarm going off, but it wasn’t in his house. The sound was coming from an open phone line.
He and his close friend, Kim, had fallen asleep while talking to each other on the phone. McAfee woke up when he heard her smoke alarm.
“I yelled on the phone … ‘Kim, Kim wake up!’ And she didn’t answer me,” McAfee told 24 Hour News 8 on Wednesday. “So I hung the phone up and I was like, I’m going to dial her back. So I dialed her back about maybe six different times. The phone would ring, maybe she would get up. Something told me … just call 911. Better be safe than sorry.”
The Grand Rapids Fire Department rushed crews to Kim’s home in the 2200 block of Horton Avenue SE near Division Avenue. Firefighters found her just beyond the front door and rescued her.
“I knew that it was urgent that we needed to get her out, so I of course just grabbed her really quick and pulled her out,” firefighter Jeffrey Bajema told 24 Hour News 8 on Wednesday.
Kim was hospitalized, but has since been released and is now staying with her mother, McAfee said.
“In my career I have pulled some people that haven’t made it out and this is really nice,” Bajema said.
“It was luckily that it was right there and we were able to bring her out real quick,” fellow firefighter James McIntyre added.
After learning his dear friend Kim made it, McAfee is turning to his faith. He is convinced that his being in a position to hear the alarm and call 911 was an act of God.
“I said, you know, let her be saved. He did. She came out of there. Very well could’ve been going to her funeral,” he said. “I get choked up about that because He’s real and He’s working. I asked for that … to keep her safe and He used me to do it.”
Authorities say the fire is believed to have started in the kitchen when Kim was cooking chicken.>>Our sister station WOOD first reported this story
