“You can say, ‘Well, what is the good from this?’ Warren told the council. “Certainly, there was a tragedy, a major tragedy, where we lost an individual, a resident of our community, but the good – if we find any good in it – is we bought him some time to where he could have some closure with his family.”

Warren said the rescue attempt started when a person exited a house and was saying he didn’t know where an old man had gone.

“This house is now almost getting ready to be engulfed,” Warren said. “The trailer’s on fire. There’s a boat in front of it. I worry if the gas catches, is it going to explode? And these fire guys are right there trying to fight it. Our police officers are trying to get in the house to figure out where he’s at.

“They end up having to kick the door. They force entry. We had a couple guys try to go around the back of the house to get inside. And as I watched their body camera, there’s just a wall of smoke – it’s like, ‘oh my gosh’ – and flames.

“They ultimately make entry inside with the help of a Roy City officer, and I think by now, there’s a couple deputies there. They extricate the guy out. He’s severely burned.

“With the fire department fighting the fire, there’s traffic everywhere, it didn’t make sense to wait for an ambulance, so the officers made the decision, let’s load him in this police truck – in the back of the truck – and let’s get him to the hospital.”

Warren said Burrell was alive and able to communicate but in a lot of pain.

“Not wanting to necessarily even go to the hospital, but we were like ‘Hey, you’ve got to go,'” Warren said. “Tough, tough, tough man is what he was. He was a tough, tough old bird.”

Warren said there was nothing that ultimately could be done to help the man because of the burns that he had, but they bought him time.

“Time to say goodbye to his family, time to have some closure, time that he may not have had had they not risked their lives and went in there and got him out and got him to the hospital,” he said.

Speaking to the Standard-Examiner, Warren said perspective is the No. 1 thing that gets an officer through their career.

“Perspective is everything,” he said.

He said perspective can be used on anything that someone deals with. He said he encourages officers to look at things a different way and that if you can find the good, the job is easier.

“It makes it more rewarding, because sometimes it’s hard to find a reward in a tragedy,” he said.

Warren highlighted to the City Council that they got everyone else out so there weren’t more tragedies.

“I could see these guys when I was there, how hard they were working, and everyone … running, sprinting place to place, exhausted,” Warren said. “And so, when you have guys and gals that are willing to do that, you know, it says a lot about their character and it says a lot about the city, because I know every one of us want to be in this city.”

Contact Standard-Examiner editor Ryan Comer at rcomer@standard.net.