FAIRHOPE, Ala. — Wayne Loudermilch thinks it was just before midnight when the fire alarm woke him up.

His wife, Anne, who has amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, the neurodegenerative disease known as Lou Gehrig’s disease, was asleep in the first-floor bedroom of their house on Magnolia Avenue, he said. His wife’s live-in nurse, Linda Barnes, was in an upstairs bedroom. He believes their dog, Dudley, was also in the bedroom with them.

“When I jumped out of bed, I just assumed it was a false alarm,” Loudermilch said Thursday. “I was headed to the foyer to deactivate the alarm. When I got into the kitchen, flames were licking from the walls. It was a solid wall of fire.”

Loudermilch, 70, said Barnes had awakened to the sound of crackling fire and come downstairs by that time to get his wife out of bed.

”I went to call 911 but was unable to do that,” he said. “My priority was to get Anne out of the house. I basically picked her up and threw her into the (wheel)chair.”

He also put a wet towel over her head to protect her from the smoke and began pushing the chair toward the garage in the back of the house where he thought they could get out, when the chair got stuck.

“I frankly think it was an angel holding us back,” he said, “because I don’t know that it would have been possible for us to make it to the garage.”

They returned to the bedroom where he hoped to get out through a window.

“I was about to pass out from the fumes,” he said. “Then all the lights went out. It was stone total darkness.”

Although disoriented in the dark, he ripped the curtain down and kicked the window as hard as he could, but said his foot bounced off the window without breaking it.

“I was getting progressively weaker, on the verge of passing out.” I knew if I didn’t do something, the three of us were going to die in that room.”

He said he pulled his fist back and slammed it into the window.

“I gave it all I had,” he said. “I think an angel had a hand in that, too. If my foot couldn’t go through, how could my hand? But my hand went right through the window.”

Bleeding from cuts on both hands and his bare feet, he scraped glass shards and fragments out of the frame and climbed through where he could finally breathe fresh air.

“As I stepped out, I realized there was going to be little chance of my pulling them both out,” Loudermilch said. “I called out for help as loud as I could. When I turned to go back in the window, it was like a toxic wall.”

Although he didn’t know it at the time, two Fairhope police officers had arrived at the scene and were trying to break in the front door, when they heard him screaming. He said he learned later that Sgt. Curtis Sullivan and Officer James Nelson had to retreat from the front door because it was too hot. He said he thought they probably concluded no one was home, or that it was too late. But then they heard his shouts for help.

“They seemed to get to us in nanoseconds,” he said. “They told me to step back, they were going in. Then they crawled in. I heard one, I think it was Nelson, gasping, ‘I can’t breathe, I can’t breathe.”

As Loudermilch talked on the phone Thursday, this was the first point during his story where he had trouble going on. After a moment, he continued.

“”I thought, ‘Oh my gosh, Anne and Linda are gone,’” he said. “Then, seconds later they brought Anne to the window.”

Loudermilch said they got his wife out the window, and that she somehow avoided getting any cuts from the glass in the window or on the ground.

“Everything all happened so incredibly fast,” he said. “When Anne was outside on the grass, I was afraid she would have a breathing episode (without her nebulizer). It was a life or death situation.”

After his wife was stabilized, he said, then he thought of Dudley, their dog.

“Later, Anne and I held out hope that he might have jumped out the window,” he said. “People have been looking in the neighborhood. But we think he probably perished.”

Loudermilch said Sullivan and Nelson are “real heroes,” and that Fairhope can be immensely proud for having men like them working for the city.

“It’s hard to imagine someone going in to a burning house like that voluntarily, without knowing if you’re going to get out,” he said.

Loudermilch said he, his wife, Barnes and the two police officers were transported to Thomas Hospital early Wednesday morning.

“They were in nightgowns, and I was in a pair of bloody pajamas,” he said. “People have been bringing us clothes. We’re staying with friends and looking for a new house.”

He said the outpouring of support from St. James Episcopal Church, where they are members, and from the community has been full of compassion and encouragement.

“I was in a restaurant this morning and a man came up and asked if I was Mr. Loudermilch whose house was destroyed,” he said. “The man said, ‘I’m sorry. I’ve been praying for you.’”

During that early Wednesday at Thomas Hospital, the Loudermilchs were visited by Katie Wesley, who lives near them on Boise Lane, and was the first person in the neighborhood to see the fire and started banging on doors and screaming for help.

Wesley said she had not met the Loudermilchs until that day.

“They are just such wonderful people,” she said. “She was just beautiful that morning in her attitude. We hadn’t found their dog but I was trying to be optimistic.”

Wesley said a nurse brought in Anne’s husband, Wayne, at that moment in a wheelchair, after he had been stitched up for the cuts on his hand.

“He looked at his wife and said, ‘A guardian angel was looking over us last night,’” Wesley said. “Then she looked at him and said, ‘You’re my guardian angel.’”