Bryan Nelson gets tears in his eyes when he thinks about his neighbor’s loss.

He calls Mike Mannell a “hero.”

“He was building his house — a two-story cabin on Canyon Creek — for six years. It was his retirement dream home,” Nelson said.

When the Canyon Creek Complex fire hit the canyon, Nelson, who owns a house that he rents to tenants, was away. But Mannell was there.

“That day of the fire, he said the wind came up and there was a wall of fire coming right down the canyon,” Nelson said.

Mannell ran to turn the sprinklers on at Nelson’s house. The latest tenant had just moved away; the house was empty.

“He turned the sprinklers on, he grabbed his guns,” and he fled, Nelson said.

Mannell’s nearly completed house, which he had built himself, burned to the ground. Nelson’s house survived.

“He saved my house,” Nelson said, pausing a bit to catch his composure. “I’m sure it helped. He had kept it mowed down all around it, and it was green.”

Although the fire approached the house, nothing burned, not even the outbuildings.

“Everything was saved,” Nelson said.

In addition to his house, Mannell’s two antique cars, the camper he stayed in, a chicken house, two tractors and a horse trailer were destroyed. His horses survived.

Mannell is going to stay at Nelson’s rental house for now, Nelson said.

Nelson displayed some photos he shot in the fire’s aftermath. His barn and house are in the shot, with a patch of scorched earth in the forefront. Nelson shook his head at what could have been, had it not been for Mannell.

“He’s a hero,” Nelson said.