School bus driver Todd Morris considers the students on his route to be to be like family.
“They’re my kids,” Morris, 54, tells TODAY.com. “I’d do anything for my kids.”
He would even risk his life.
Morris was behind the wheel of his Toyota Tacoma on the morning of Jan. 22, when he spotted flames shooting from a second-story window in Jackson Township, Ohio.
Morris recognized the house immediately. He knew that Matt and Jordan Fisher lived there with their four young children, two of whom ride Morris’s bus.
“My heart just dropped,” Morris says, noting that area schools were closed that day due to freezing temperatures. “All I could think was, ‘My kids. My kids are inside.’”
Morris dialed 911. Then he jumped out of his vehicle and sprinted towards the flames.
When no one answered the locked door, Morris, a former police officer, kicked it in with his foot.
“There was so much smoke I could barely see in front of me. It took me a second to orient myself and figure out which way I needed to go,” Morris says.
Morris decided to start his search upstairs where the ceilings were starting to collapse.
“The second floor was completely engulfed,” he says.
As Morris was making his way back to ground level, he came face to face-to-face with the Fishers two dogs, Lady and Cash.
“They were staring at me like deer in headlights. They looked so scared,” Morris recalls. Cash, a German Shepard was unable to walk, so Morris picked him up and carried him to safety.
“I put them both in my car,” he says.
Then Morris entered the burning house again.
“I kept hearing these noises, but I couldn’t differentiate what they were or where they were coming from,” he says. “I needed to make sure that no one was inside.”
Firefighters, who were alerted by Morris, had the blaze under control within 90 minutes of their arrival, according to local newspaper Canton Repository.
As it would turn out, Matt and Jordan Fisher were at work, and their children, Brooklyn, 14, Riley, 10, Arizona, 8, and Dakota, 4, had spent the night with their grandparents.
“Todd Morris is a hero,” Matt Fisher tells TODAY.com. “He risked his life to go in there and save my family. He didn’t think twice.”
Fisher says he became emotional when he saw Morris after the fire.
“I gave him a big hug, and thanked him for what he did. Our dogs mean everything to us. We’ve had them since they were pups,” Fisher says says. “I was crying.”
“I was in the right place at the right time,” Morris says
The fire is still under investigation according to Jackson Township Fire Chief Timothy Berczik.
“Most people would just call 911 and keep driving,” Berczik tells TODAY. “But Todd being a retired police officer knew that when it’s cold and windy, every second counts. He met us when we got there and was able to give us the lay of the land.”
The Fishers home was completely destroyed, and a GoFundMe has been set up for the family as they begin to rebuild.