Video: Columbus Firefighters Honored for Efforts to Combat Wednesday Blaze

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COLUMBUS, Miss. (WCBI) — Five Columbus firefighters and 13 fellow firefighters are being hailed as heroes for rescuing adults and children from Wednesday’s tragic apartment fire.

The five — Tommy Massey, Daryl Brown, and Ray Whitson on one team and Jeff Kain and Randall Beatty on another — are credited with getting two adults and three children out of the two hardest hit apartments. One involved rescuing a victim down a ladder from the second floor.

When firefighters arrived at about 2 a.m., they were greeted by flames and residents running frantically banging on doors trying to get people awake and out.

While the five wouldn’t talk publicly, they said they reacted the way they were trained.

“We just knew we had to get them out. It’s tough that we couldn’t get them all,” one of them told WCBI.