Via Task and Purpose by Joshua Skovlund and Matt White
“I’ve always been the type of person to help when I can,” said Petty Officer 1st Class Gabriel Journey, a third-generation Navy submariner.
A Navy sailor assigned to a nuclear submarine scaled the wall of a burning apartment building to save multiple people, including an entrapped woman and her son Tuesday, an act captured on video by a bystander.
The video shows Petty Officer 1st Class Gabriel Journey, an Electronics Technician Nuclear, assigned to the USS Albany fast attack submarine in Norfolk, climbing to a narrow ledge on the exterior of an apartment as a woman calls for help from a window and as smoke and flames close in. Journey pulled the woman and her son from the flames, easing them into the arms of the crowd beneath.
Journey also helped rescue two more people from a different window using a ladder before the apartment was fully engulfed.
“I’ve always been the type of person to help when I can,” Journey said. He credited Navy submarine training with making the difference. “We do casualty response training onboard submarines. That helped me maintain a calm posture in a chaotic situation.”
Journey, who grew up in Atlanta, Georgia, had left work to pick up his spouse at the airport on Tuesday when he passed the apartment complex about two blocks from his home.
“I pulled over and a young lady in the parking lot said her apartment was on fire. We called 911 and ended up on hold,” he said. Eventually he flagged down a police officer then joined a group gathered under a window. As high winds stoked the fire from unit to unit in the complex, a woman appeared in the window.
The woman was clearly too scared to jump, Journey said and someone in the crowd told him her son was inside, too.
“I decided to do it myself since there was not enough time,” he said.
With that, he began to climb, boosted by the crowd. He grabbed the window then pulled himself up onto a single layer of brick that served as a ledge.
“It was about 4 inches wide,” Journey said.
From the side of the window, he helped the woman climb out, lowering her to the ground, then helped her son escape.
The two-alarm fire injured 2 and displaced 32 residents, according to local television station WAVY. The call was first reported to emergency services at 2:10 p.m.
A video posted to Facebook page Paige Vs Dip shows Journey pulling the woman out despite flames and thick smoke billowing from the nearby windows.
The Albany is a Los Angeles-class attack sub-launched in 1987 and commissioned in 1990.
Update: 11/13/2024; This article was updated after publication with additional information from Petty Officer 1st Class Gabriel Journey.
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I’m surprised the cop didn’t shoot him to keep him from climbing up there! I mean, I assume that’s what cops are supposed to do. Like the Uvalde cops who restrained people from running into the school to try and save their kids. I guess this cop didn’t pay attention in class.