Video shows deputies rescuing couple and their pet dog from burning home

Police in California have released some harrowing body camera footage of two deputies braving blinding, choking smoke and red-hot flames to rescue an elderly couple from a house fire.

On Dec. 18 around 1:36 a.m., Kern County Sheriff's Deputies Diego Gonzalez and Kenneth Muller were among the first to respond to reports of a blaze on the 5200 block of Montecito Drive in Bakersfield.

"When deputies arrived, the residence was fully engulfed in flames and smoke. They learned the elderly couple living there may not have left the burning house. Deputies found an elderly woman in a wheelchair holding a dog outside the residence next to the front door. There was smoke surrounding her, and she did not appear able to move. Deputies brought her and the dog to safety," the sheriff's office said in a Dec. 18 post on its Facebook page.

The department included two dramatic images, including one of a person pushing someone in a wheelchair down a driveway as flames rose high in the sky behind them as well as another shot of a person running away from the fire.

In Gonzalez's body camera footage, which was released by the sheriff's office on Thursday, he could be heard asking the woman in the wheelchair whether she had any other dogs and then pushing her away from the fire.

"Just hold on, OK? I'm holding onto your shirt," he tells the frightened woman. "Is there anybody else inside the house?"

The woman asks him and Muller whether her husband has made it out of the burning home. The deputies then ask a bystander to hold onto the woman's wheelchair so they can locate and get help to her husband.

Both deputies can be seen stepping into the house, yelling "Greg," the husband's name, and then running around the side of the building. Their cameras capture the loud popping sounds of the burning fire as the deputies hop a fence to reach the man.

"The deputies then went to the backyard and located the elderly man outside the house, who appeared to be disoriented. They were able to escort him to safety," the department said in its Facebook post.

With one side of the home completely engulfed in fire and unable to pass through, the deputies and the husband were able to find a way out on the opposite side.

"Come this way here," Gonzalez tells the man. "We got your wife. She's in the front. ... Let me just make sure there's nobody else back here, bro."

Minutes later, he could be heard saying that the house had been completely evacuated.

"We knew that we had to make a decision, we had to act, because the fire was going very fast," Muller said in an interview with ABC News affiliate KERO-TV in Bakersfield recently.

The Kern County Sheriff's Office said neither the residents nor the deputies were injured during the fire.

"Most of the time, we have to put ourselves aside and think about why we're working every single night -- it's to keep people safe," Gonzalez told ABC News affiliate KERO-TV. "In order to do that, we have to think quick, fast and take decisions that sometimes seem like we're trying to be heroes but it's just what we're trained to do."

The cause of the fire was still unknown, according to authorities.