It was a very close call with a fast-moving fire. A real close call. But Colby Gabel knew what to do … and did it. Get himself and his fiancée out of their second-story apartment, along with their dog Maggie, as fast as he could. With only the clothes on their backs, they made it out, barely beating the flames. They lost everything. Even her engagement ring.
And immediately, this off-duty firefighter became on duty as much as he could to help others, and today he is “Our Town Hero.”
KFD Firefighter Colby Gabel
Gabel, just 23, is a firefighter/ advanced EMT with the Knoxville Fire Dept. (KFD), whose training quickly kicked in on Sunday, December 14, 2025, around 6:15 p.m. That’s when a wind-driven fire ripped through Building 9 at The Collective at Sutherland Apartments at 1505 Greenbrier Ridge Way. The wind made the 18-degree temperature feel a lot colder, too.
Building 9 is a total loss, along with everything inside its 10 apartments, leaving 15 homeless. When KPD controlled the fire at 7:45 p.m., three people had to be hospitalized. Everyone survived, pets too. The fire’s origin was in the unit below Gabel’s. A pan of cooking oil had ignited on the stove, and the woman tried to carry it outside. The oil spilled onto some furniture in their living room, and the fire was born.
Gabel says they were relaxing, watching TV, when they heard a commotion downstairs and heard someone yell “fire.” He opened their door and walked out onto the second level of the breezeway and felt the wind. Then he saw it. The wall of that apartment below his unit was glowing orange. “I knew then it was on fire, and with the wind I could feel, it was really bad,” he says. “We had to get out immediately. I got my fiancée (Karli Constantino) and our dog Maggie downstairs as fast as I could. Karli and Maggie went to the apartment complex leasing office. Our entire staircase on our floor was fully burning within a minute after we got out, and the entire top story was on fire about two to three minutes later.”
Once outside, Gabel went into firefighter mode. He heard people screaming and yelling. “I ran around the corner of the building to the screams, and two people were trapped on their third-story balcony, about 25 to 30 feet up. The woman jumped, and I tried to catch her and did break her fall, but she was still injured. Her husband was still on the balcony, and I tried to get him to jump towards me, but he didn’t make it and hit an AC unit below his balcony,” Gabel said. “He was hurt, and both of them were taken to the hospital.”
When it was over, the roof and part of the flooring in their apartment collapsed into the downstairs unit where the fire began. One KFD officer said Gabel’s unit and the one where the fire started were the ones most damaged in the building.
Being off duty, he had no fire gear, no emergency medical equipment, nothing. But he did what he could, checking apartments, windows and doors to try and make sure fellow tenants were getting out, and helping those who were hurt as best as he could until help arrived. He got close enough to the hot fire to have his eyebrows and sideburns singed.
Gabel and his family moved to East Tennessee in 2021 from their home in Huntington Beach, California. His father was a policeman in Huntington Beach and had fireman friends Gabel knew. “I joined a fire explorer program in high school and always wanted to be a firefighter. I saw an ad for the Knoxville department in 2023 and applied and was hired.” He graduated from the KPD Fire Academy on January 12, 2024.
Here are a few more interesting details about this story:
- Gabel works out of Station 20 at West Hills behind Firehouse Subs on the Red shift. His fiancée, Karli, works at Second Presbyterian Church in its preschool program.
- Gabel’s older sister, Regan, also lives in the same apartment complex but in another building.
- His cousin, Kyle King, is a KFD firefighter at Station 18 on Weisgarber Road and was part of the team battling the fire.
Gabel said his family grew tired of living in California and made the move to East Tennessee in 2021, along with his aunt and her family. “Many people have left California and are still leaving for a lot of reasons and our family did too,” he said.
Coincidentally, soon after Karli’s family soon moved and they settled in Smithville, Tennessee, near Center Hill Lake. That made it easy for Gabel and Karli to reunite. These two started dating in middle school and are still together. A wedding is planned for September 4, 2027.
His mother recently moved to South Carolina near Charleston, leaving behind her house in Lenoir City. That has become his and Karli’s new home. His mother helped out with the furniture issue. “The chaos and fallout from this has finally settled down, but the amount of help we have received has been insane. KFD has helped us tremendously beyond anything we expected, with clothes and with our expenses, whatever we’ve needed. I’m kinda at a loss for words to describe what this has meant to us.”
And about Karli’s lost engagement ring? “It’s a crazy good story. We searched and searched but never found it. We went back to Helzburg Diamonds at the mall (West Town) to get a new one and told them what had happened. They said they’d make a duplicate for us. A few days later they called and said her ring was ready. When we picked it up they would not let us pay for it. Incredible. Absolutely incredible.”
It has been a life-changing and work-changing experience for this young KFD firefighter. “I’ve learned something major from this experience. I now fully understand the other side of any fire like this when you are a victim, and you experience and see what people are going through, the sympathy needed for them, their shock and hurt. It’s a weird feeling. As firefighters, we’re focused on the fire, and now I fully understand that this is someone’s everything, what they own, their lives, their belongings, and it makes you feel and think about what they’re going through. It’s made me very aware of the human side of this job.”
Tom King has been the editor of newspapers in Texas and California, and also worked in Tennessee and Georgia. If you have someone you think we should consider featuring, please email Tom at the link with his name or text him at 865-659-3562.
Aubrey’s Restaurants sponsors our Town Hero.
