NATCHEZ — Krista Cox said when she awoke to a smoke filled house she knew there was a fire — she just couldn’t find her way out.

“I just can’t explain the panic,” Cox said, standing in what used to be her living room.

Cox estimated it was shortly after 2 a.m. when her Eastwood Drive house caught fire.

And a day after the fire Cox, 24, was still shaking with emotion as she recounted her ordeal.

Cox said when she tried to leave her room she was almost immediately disoriented, and could not find her way to the front door.

But while Cox was confused and gripped by panic, unbeknownst to her, help was on the way.

“If it weren’t for them I might not be here,” she said of her neighbors.

Just a few doors down from Cox, Christy Hutchinson was settling in from a long night at work when she heard popping noises she originally believed to be gunshots.

But the popping wasn’t gunshots; it was Cox’s house.

Hutchinson said she was concerned the fire could spread to other houses on the block and wasted no time taking action.

Hutchinson said she kicked her husband to wake him, dialed 911, told the operator the address and ran to the house with her husband Travis.

“It was just a reaction, it was happening so fast,” Hutchinson said, snapping her fingers.

Travis Hutchinson said when he and his wife got to the house smoke was pouring from the structure.

“I was hoping no one was in there,” Travis Hutchinson said.

Not long after that, Hutchinson saw two of Cox’s houseguests coming from a window.

Cox said her two friends were unable to breathe as a result of the smoke and had to leave the house without her.

“You couldn’t breathe in here,” Cox said.

To get Cox out of the house, Travis and his wife began yelling and beating on the side of the house so that Cox could follow the sound to the window were Travis and his wife were waiting.

And when Cox, then using a comforter to shield her face from smoke, arrived at the window Travis seized his opportunity.

“I just jerked her out,” he said.

And for that, Cox and her mother are extremely grateful.

“Travis is a total hero,” Deidre Cox, Krista’s mother, said.

But Travis doesn’t agree.

Hutchinson said he and his wife were doing what they thought was right.

“I didn’t think much of it at the time,” he said. “I just didn’t want anyone to die.”

However, there were two deaths as a result of the fire.

Cox lost both of her dogs in the blaze.

She said once she got out of the house she tried to call them from the door.

“I was yelling for them, and I heard nothing,” she said. “I knew they were gone.”

While Cox said she believes the fire started in the shed and spread to the house, the Natchez Fire Department isn’t quite sure what happened yet.

Capt. Aaron Wesley said the cause was still under investigation.