Jerry O’Connell jumped into action when he saw a food truck on fire in Malibu, California.
The local sheriff’s deputies told TMZ on Monday, July 18, that the authorities found the truck fire one day prior. After arriving on the scene, authorities pulled a man out of the burning vehicle and started removing nearby propane tanks.
O’Connell, 49, was driving with his twin daughters, Dolly and Charlie, 14, — who he shares with wife Rebecca Romijn — when he spotted the disaster. He pulled over to move a gas can away from the nearby fire. He “scaled a fence to grab a fire extinguisher” and tried to help the deputies keep the fire at bay while waiting for the fire department to arrive.
This isn’t the first time the actor made headlines for moonlighting as a firefighter. In 2003, he helped firefighters battle a wildfire near the San Bernardino mountains, close to where he was living at the time.
O’Connell’s heroic attitude was a different side of their father than what his daughters usually see. The Talk cohost and Romijn, 50, previously told Us Weekly that they enjoy embracing their parental right to publicly embarrass their children.
Jerry O’Connell. Erik Pendzich/Shutterstock
“We actually have a pretty old car in our household, and I think it’s important to have your kids dropped off at school in the most embarrassing family car possible,” Romijn told Us exclusively in November 2019. “Where I’m from, we call it a hooptie.”
Her husband added, “We live in a suburb of Los Angeles called Calabasas where a lot of celebrity families live [and drive expensive cars]. There’s only a couple of malls where we live and you know when a celebrity is there because there’s a couple of Bentleys taking up a few spaces. Whatever is a Bentley, we have the opposite of that car.”
The pair, who wed in 2007, make no secret of the difficulties of parenting twin teenage girls.
“We had twins and now we’re too afraid to split up because one of us might end up with our kids,” O’Connell joked to Us in November 2019. “We stay together and not for the kids, so not one of us has to deal with them. We would have a rare anti-custody battle. You know how famous couples go through custody battles and they’re crazy and drag on for years? We would have a very quick [one]. ‘Your honor, I should not have anything to do with these children.’ … They know. This is not a secret.”