DALTON, Ga. — A house fire last week at 405 Burchfield Ave. that resulted in two sisters being evacuated by a neighbor is believed to have been accidental, Dalton Fire Department Chief Todd Pangle said.

“We know that it started around the carport, where the car was parked,” Pangle said. “We can’t pinpoint the exact cause. We don’t know if it was the car or something with the building. But there’s nothing to indicate this wasn’t an accident.”

The house was shared by sisters Carolyn and Faye Wooten, whom Pangle says have been taken in by family members.

Neighbor Abraham Sanchez Lopez was awakened by his dog barking around 3:30 a.m. on July 8. He spotted the fire and ran to the house and banged on the front door.

“I knew that it was a home for two older women because we all know each other around here,” Lopez said.

When neither of the sisters answered, he took a bench from the front porch and knocked the window on the front of the house out. He ripped off the framing around the window and jumped in.

By the time he got the sisters to the front porch, the fire had spread to the structure of the home, and a ramp from the front porch for Carolyn Wooten, who uses a wheelchair, was blocked by flames. Lopez ripped off the railing of the porch.

“I couldn’t take the woman in the wheelchair off the porch with her chair, so I got down and put her over my shoulder and carried her away,” Lopez said.

When he got back, Faye Wooten had gotten off the porch, and police and fire units began arriving.

Pangle said Lopez and the Wootens did not suffer any serious injuries.

Lopez’s actions had Faye Wooten and family members calling him a hero.

“It was a blessing,” Faye Wooten said. “We never would have made it out alive if he hadn’t come and got us out. I am just so grateful.”