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Molino Girl Scout Honored For Saving Lives Of Her Mother And Grandmother In House Fire

A Molino Girl Scout was honored as a hero Wednesday afternoon for saving her family from a January 2019 house fire on Crabtree Church Road.

Destany McKim, 14, was presented with the Girl Scout Bronze Cross for Valor for saving her mother and grandmother from the fire about 12:30 a.m. on January 25, 2019. The award is the highest honor given by the Girl Scouts for saving a life.

For a photo gallery, click here.

Escambia County Fire Prevention Officer Ray Melton said, “If this young lady had not acted the way she did that night of that fire, this would have been a very tragic fire for Escambia County.We would have lost three lives. But her bravery carried her through. She used her fear as a tool — which we try to teach our kids — and she pulled through.”

Destany, who was 12 at the time of the fire, said she was up late doing homework, and smelled a little smoke. At first, she thought her mother was cooking.

“As soon as I looked over at the living room, the extension cord just burst into flames,” Destany told NorthEscambia.com. She immediately went to wake her mom and grandmother as the house began to fill with dark smoke.

“My mom is a smoker, so she didn’t smell the smoke. It didn’t wake her up, and my grandmother wears a CPAP machine, so couldn’t have smelled it,” she said. There were no working smoke alarms in the home.

As she got her mother and grandmother out of the home, she had the forethought to close the doors to slow the spread of the fire. Her grandmother went back in with a fire extinguisher, but the flames spread rapidly.

“It just spread everywhere, and the windows had just burst.”

She worked to save the three family dogs, including a 65-pound basset hound that she ultimately had to tote away from the burning home.

“Most people run out of a building that is burning. Well, she ran back into that building. That is exactly what a hero Destany is,” Escambia County Public Safety Director Jason Rogers said during a ceremony Wednesday at the Molino Fire Station.  “You can’t teach courage. Courage is in here, and you have it within you. So, today Destany, you are our hero, and we honor you.”

“I don’t feel like I am a hero. I feel like I did what anybody else would have done in that situation because I just thought of my family. If I had gone into panic mode, there was no keeping my mother out of panic mode,” Destany said. “I don’t feel like a hero, but I’m flattered.”

“She’s a hero. A real hero. She saved her lives,” Destany’s mother Datanya Wells said.

Destany, who will attend Northview High School this year, may have a future in firefighting. She’s applying to be an Escambia County Fire Rescue junior firefighter.

For a photo gallery, click here.

NorthEscambia.com photos, click to enlarge.