SOUTHERN SHORES, N.C. — A large fire completely destroyed an oceanfront rental vacation property on Wednesday.
"It was a horrific scene," said Savannah Tapler, longtime visitor to the Outer Banks.
"We've been coming here for over 30 years, and this is the first time that I can actually say to see something terrible like that happen," said Aidan Tapler.
Aidan and Savannah Tapler, like many bystanders and neighbors, saw the home at 150 Ocean Boulevard up in flames on Wednesday.
“We were getting ready to take the kids to go get ice cream, and my son says, Dad, there's a fire," said Aidan.
But instead sprang into action.
“I ran and grabbed my shoes, and I just took off running. By the time I got to the front of the house, the whole third floor was already in flames. I saw there was another officer that was trying to help the fire department get their hoses. So I went up to the front where they were just backing in the ladder truck, and they were starting to get the hoses out, and I just was helping them move the hoses to where they needed to go," said Aidan.
But it wasn’t just one or two people, many came to assist the emergency responders as they fought the fire.
“There's multiple people from these homes that just came out and were helping firefighters, it was a great community effort," said Aidan.
News 3 now knows that the house was being rented and a real estate company owns it. Luckily nobody was inside when it happened. The emergency crews efforts made sure the fire was contained mostly to just the single house.
“Once you saw the smoke coming from those two homes, they just directed and made sure that those homes were protected. For them to do what they did to save those houses, you can see from the back side about how much heat was going and how it was starting to smolder and melt, you got to commend them for doing what they did," said Aidan.
Though a cause of the fire remains unknown, a teaching moment for the Tapler family.
“Probably the only big positive that came out of it was we had a very deep conversation with all the children in our home about fire safety, what they should do if the house catches on fire, where to meet out front," said Savannah.
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