Two Ridgetop Junior High School students were a little late to school on Thursday morning but they had a great excuse.

At about 6:45 a.m. 14-year-old T.J. Sims and 15-year-old Tramell Wells, both residents of the Santa Fe Ridge Apartments, were walking to school when they smelled the distinct smell of smoke.

The two tracked down the scent and saw there was a fire on one of the second-floor balconies in their apartment complex. Tramell got on his cell phone and called 911 while T.J. started knocking on doors and warning people.

“I was calling 911 on my cell phone and they were questioning us,” Tramell said. He was bit nervous, so he handed the phone to T.J., he said.

“My hands were shaking, but my mind was calm,” T.J. said.

While those two were talking to the 911 dispatcher and knocking on doors, another neighbor knocked on the door of the apartment where the fire was.

It took Central Kitsap Fire & Rescue about five minutes to get to the apartments, the boys said.

When fire crews arrived, the fire had already spread to the living room, the spare bedroom, the master bedroom and the attic.

The victim, Yvonne Walker, said she was sound asleep when her husband, Brad, woke her up and told her their balcony was on fire. Brad was alerted by a woman that neither Brad nor Yvonne knew.

At first, Yvonne couldn’t believe what she was hearing because the couple was burned out of their house in Bremerton just two years ago.

“He told me to get Destiny (their 7-year-old daughter) and get out of the apartment,” she said.

The couple and their daughter made it out of the apartment safely. The family had a gray cat, a black cat and a hamster. Fire fighters reunited the family with the hamster and some neighbors said they saw the gray cat run out of the apartment. The black cat, too, was believed to have survived but it couldn’t be located immediately after the fire.

According to CKFR spokesperson Lindsy Ingram, the family was burnt out of the apartment and the apartment manager will find a vacant apartment for the family to move into. The family didn’t have renter’s insurance.

The American Red Cross also was on the scene to help the family recover.

While the Walkers’ apartment was a loss, damage to other apartments is not yet determined.

As of Thursday afternoon, the cause of the fire had not yet been determined.

Sundi Ogle, who lives in the apartment under the Walkers, said the two boys knocked on her door and told her there was a fire. Ogle said the only damage done to her apartment was likely some water damage.

Neither T.J. nor Tramell thought their actions were particularly heroic.

“We were just doing the right thing,” T.J. said.

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