Just doing his job. (The Goodness of America).

Washington, D.C., firefighter John Turner joined the department as a cadet in 1987. On August 3rd of this year, he nearly lost his life while helping to evacuate residents of a burning apartment building in northwest Washington. The 10-story, 227-unit facility housed about 200 handicapped residents, 24 of whom were wheelchair-bound. Reporting for the August 10th Washington Times, Matthew Cella recounted Turner's heroic efforts.

Turner was working Overtime on ambulance duty and had just dropped off a patient at a hospital, when he and his partner, EMT Sharon Moore, noticed smoke rising from the apartment building shortly after 8 p.m. They rushed to the facility and, despite a lack of protective gear, entered the building to locate and evacuate residents. Climbing to the sixth floor, Turner began banging on apartment doors. When there were no responses, he ran to the next floor, where he found an elderly woman whom he helped to escape.

Turner re-entered the building and made his way once again to the sixth floor. His experience had taught him that when some individuals are asleep, they fail to respond to an initial knock, and that others may opt to lock their doors and stay in their apartments during afire. He "had to feel his way along the 'pitch-dark' hallway, where he stumbled upon an elderly woman two doors from where the fire had started." The woman did not want to leave, but Turner "pulled her to the floor, and they tried to crawl out." He lost his way, but when he began calling for help "a police officer heard him and shined his flashlight on the exit sign." Turner carried the woman down the stairs and out of the building. ...