“The smoke alarms were going off, we didn’t hear them, and then the dog started barking and that’s what woke us up,” said Saddie Acles. “I walked over and I opened up our curtains and all I saw was smoke and flames, but the fire trucks were already here.”
Fire crews responded around 2 a.m. Tuesday morning to the report of a possible building fire in the 2000 block.
“Units arrived on scene to find heavy fire on the side and already into the roof structure,” Assistant Fire Chief Matthew Smith said. “Fire had already spread up into the roof and once it does that, you’re losing the building.”
Acles said she started screaming, “get my baby, someone save my baby,” as the fire department helped rescue them from the burning apartment.
“They got my son out of his window on the second story, then my husband and I came down,” she said. “We were very lucky.”
While Acles, her husband and their 15-month-old son were being rescued, their dog was too afraid of the fire to come down from the apartment.
“My dog wouldn’t come down because he was scared, but then my father-in-law tried to be brave and go in and get him. They ended up going in and getting him, but when they brought him out he got so scared, he ran back inside,” Acles said of the family dog. “The smoke got so bad, he jumped from the second story and he broke his leg.”
The dog is currently at a veterinarian hospital, Acles said. No one in the family was reported injured.
“He did save our lives,” Acles said.
Fire crews also managed to rescue a other residents along with this family, Smith said.
The cause of the fire is still under investigation, Smith said. He added that if crews were a few minutes later, it would have been a real tragedy.
“It started right here in this front porch area,” he said. “What we’re looking for is the heat source, what started it, and we haven’t been able to find anything yet."
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