Father-son honored for heroic fire rescue

LITTLEVILLE – Without firefighting gear but armed with experience and courage, a father and son saved two strangers from a burning home – an act that earned them Life Saver awards from the Russellville City Council.

Rodney McAnally Sr. and Rodney McAnally Jr. Were recognized for responding without hesitation when they found out assistance was needed to rescue people from a house fire.

Fire Marshal Justin Green said the event occurred on Feb. 9 when the Russellville Fire Department received a call to help a fire department outside their jurisdiction.

“Ottie and Sharon Steien are both here today because two individuals heard over the radio that somebody was inside a structure fire,” Green said.

Not a normal day

It happened a little more than three months ago when what began as an ordinary day turned into a fight for survival.

Russellville natives Ottie and Sharon Steien were spending what they thought was an average day at their house located just off the highway in Littleville.

The house, which had belonged to Sharon’s grandmother, was built in 1957. It had, as she said, “all the old wiring.” She and her husband had lived there since 2018.

Sharon, who has mobility limitations, recalls Ottie leaving their home for around 20 minutes to take food to someone who was in need. When he returned, the house was ablaze, and she was trapped inside.

She said the electricity flickered two or three times and then stayed off. She was in her lift chair, and it got stuck in the upward position.

“Sparks flew up from the floor from an electrical cord,” Sharon said. “They caught the recliner on fire and caught me on fire, and I had to roll out of it. The recliner went off like a Molotov cocktail. I was watching myself burn. I was watching my flesh burn. It was awful. I couldn’t stand the pain. I couldn’t stand not being able to breathe.”

Sharon said she thought that would be the end for her.

“I thought I was gone. I had already said my peace with the Lord and said just please make it quick, and then he burst through the door,” Sharon said of the moment her husband, Ottie, returned and tried to figure out how to save her.

By God’s grace

“He just burst through the door and said, ‘Where are you, Sharon?’ and I said, ‘Leave, you can’t get to me,’ and he said, ‘I’m not leaving you.”

Sharon said she then asked him to try to find some water, and he went out and came back with the garden hose and brought it into the house.

“That was blessed relief,” she said. “The toxic smoke was so bad that I was passing out, and when he sprayed the water in there, it barely doused the flames, but it gave me some relief from the smoke, and I could breathe again.”

Ottie said the first time he went into the house, his phone melted onto his shoe and the buttons on his shirt melted, as well as the key fob for his vehicle.

“That’s not from the fire – that’s from heat,” Ottie explained. “That’s how hot it was in there. The heat was just incredible. We felt like we were melting.”

“When she said to get water, I just shot out and got water and I was spraying it and they tapped me on the shoulder,” Ottie said of the father-son duo who showed up to help.

“The smoke had gotten so bad,” Ottie added, “and they just got down on the floor and one put his hand on the other’s back and they said, ‘Where are you, darling?’” Sharon said she and her husband had never met the men before that day. She didn’t remember seeing them during the event, but remembers her arms being grabbed as they drug her to safety.

Russellville Fire Marshal Justin Green, Rodney McAnally, Sr., Rodney McAnally, Jr.
PHOTO BY MARIA CAMP

While the McAnallys were working to save his wife, Ottie sprayed water on their backs with the garden hose.

“They just pulled me out across the flaming floor, and the ceiling was falling down around us,” Sharon said. “I was on the phone with 911 for almost 20 minutes,” she continued. “I kept my phone in my hand, and I had it in my hand when I made it outside.”

Ottie described the moment he saw them rescuing his wife. “They came by pulling her like a sack of feed and said I better get out,” he explained. “I had huge bruises, and I dropped the water hose, and I was right behind them. A couple of months later, investigators said the fire was electrical, likely starting either in the ceiling or under the floor.”

Sharon said she is “so thankful,” noting it was “hard to believe” when she realized she was going to make it out of the house after all.

“I was about to pass out, and I was really in total shock, and I sent a text to my sister to tell her the house burned and I was going to the hospital,” she added. “I was burned on over 10% of my body and had smoke inhalation and everything, and I ended up being in the hospital at UAB for two and a half weeks.”

Her husband, however, was only in the hospital overnight, though hospital personnel tried to persuade him to stay longer. He was eager to check on the house and insurance matters and work on figuring out the best next steps.

Sharon said her time in the hospital and in rehabilitation amounts to around two months total.

“I’ve got home health coming now,” she added. “I’m still recovering, and I have a long way to go still. I can’t walk very well, so I’m struggling with that, and my wounds are still healing, but I’m thankful to be alive.”

Sharon said it was a “blessing” the McAnallys showed up and helped her and her husband.

“He wasn’t going to leave,” she said of her husband’s rescue efforts. “If they hadn’t showed up, he would’ve died in the fire trying to get me out.”

Sharon said she was blocked in the back part of the house in a room where her husband couldn’t get to her. “He was trying, and he would not have made it. The ceiling was falling down. He would have died.”

Sharon added her husband’s efforts with the water hose enabled her to remain conscious and call out to respond when the men were looking for her.

“It was a very cold night,” she added. “Usually, we have our hose disconnected by that time of the year, but Ottie had turned it on for some reason and not disconnected it, and it was still there. It’s a good thing. A lot of things came together that were through the grace of God.”

At the council meeting, Steiens got a proper introduction to the men who helped save their lives.

“Oh, I want to hug your necks. Thank you so much,” Sharon told them. “This is the day I’ll never forget. Thank you. I gotta say, I love you both.”

Rodney McAnally Sr. said it was the kind of moment a firefighter waits their entire career to experience.

“I have worked my whole life for that one moment,” he said. “I hate that it happened. I never wanted it to happen, but I’m glad we were there when we were.”

He said he keeps a scanner going all the time and that’s how he and his son learned a disabled individual was trapped inside a burning house a couple of blocks away. He and his son didn’t hesitate to jump into action and do what they could to help.

“It’s what we call muscle memory,” Rodney Sr. said. “She couldn’t move at all. It took us maybe three minutes to find her after her husband indicated the general area of the house she was in and 30 to 45 seconds to get her out. It’s an awesome feeling to see them here today.”

Rodney Jr. echoed that sentiment, emphasizing how close the timing was. He said without Ottie’s help, he and his father would not have had time to get to the house and do what they did.

“They say fire doubles in size about every 30 seconds,” he said. “Any little spark can get a whole house going in just a matter of minutes.”

Sharon described her husband as her “hero,” reiterating how he was the first to come in the house and let her know he wouldn’t leave her.

“If you hadn’t shown up, it might have been a whole different scenario,” she told theMcAnallys. “He might not have made it out if it hadn’t been for you two, so thank you so much.”

Ottie said he didn’t know what he was doing, that he was just trying to figure out a way to get his wife out of the house. “And this man tapped me on the shoulder and asked if anybody else was in the house. I thought it was an angel,” he added.

Honoring heroism

Ottie said he wanted to say something “on behalf of the young firemen.”

“I hope and pray that you don’t see what we went through,” he said, “but every one of you firemen makes a difference in somebody’s life. Just like these two right here. Because neither one of us would be here. I’d have died fighting for her, and I couldn’t figure out how to get her out until they walked in. You don’t know much difference you made that night.”

Although the McAnallys didn’t have the benefit of protective gear, they did have the benefit of experience.

“They both had been trained in firefighting,” explained RFD Deputy Chief Randy Seal. “It’s a good thing they knew what to do, but it was still extremely dangerous.”

Seal said the men knew they were taking their lives into their own hands when they went it to try and save Sharon Steien.

“They knew they had to get in and get out,” he added. “They didn’t have much time.”

Seal said that’s the whole reason for the RFD Life Saver Award – to recognize people acting to save others despite great danger to themselves.

“They were putting somebody else’s life above their own – the fact that somebody cares about people enough to put other people above themselves, I’m glad we were able to recognize them for what they did,” he added.

Seal said the Littleville Fire Department is run on a volunteer basis. He pointed out that Rodney Sr. is a paramedic and current volunteer firefighter for RFD, as well as a retired volunteer firefighter from the Tuscumbia Fire Department. He said Rodney Jr. has worked on an ambulance before and also served as a volunteer firefighter in the past.

“God put them in the place they needed to be at the time they needed to be to take care of this,” Seal added.

Neither Rodney Sr. nor his son, Rodney Jr. got hurt beyond superficial injuries.

“You don’t know how happy I am to see you here,” the senior McAnally told the couple.

“It’s an amazing story, and it’s great to see Mr. And Mrs. Steien here and doing so much better,” said Mayor David Grissom. “I have known them all my life, and I used to shop in Mr. Steien’s sporting goods store he had on the south end of town here in Russellville. It’s amazing to hear their story.”

Sharon said her husband ran the sporting goods store for years, and worked for Coach Paul “Bear” Bryant at Alabama. When Bryant called her husband to offer him a job with the United States Football League, they decided to leave the store behind and travel to Michigan to pursue the opportunity.

“This was right after we got married,” Sharon added. “We left Russellville for 30 years, and we were traveling with sports, and then we came back to Russellville in 2012 to take care of our parents.”

In 2018, they moved to Littleville to be with her mother and father because that was the location of her mother’s home, and she wanted to return to it. Her parents stayed there until they died.

The road to recovery has been tough for Sharon, and it’s ongoing, but she’s come a long way since the cold night of the fire when, as she notes, fire was not the only issue.

“I was intubated for a little over a week and then I had a feeding tube and couldn’t swallow. I had second- and third-degree burns,” she said.

Ottie said he had “bubbles” all over his face from second-degree and thirddegree burns.

“It burned my lips, and it singed my eyes,” he recalled.

At the moment, the Steiens are living in an apartment in Muscle Shoals while they decide what to do next, and that might involve a return to Russellville.

“We couldn’t find an apartment in Russellville,” Sharon said, “so we are enjoying living in Muscle Shoals, but we are probably going to rebuild, and we may move back to Russellville for that. We loved being back in Russellville when we moved back.”