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Terrier hailed as a house fire hero
15th April 2009
AJack Russell terrier has been hailed a hero after saving her owners from a house fire.
The owners said that had it not been for their dog Tilly, they may have died from smoke inhalation long before it was realised that the floor joists beneath their bed were on fire.
The dog raised the alarm at 2.30 am one morning last November by scratching and digging by a socket in the skirting board beside the bed where the couple were asleep. “She was agitated, and was whining and scratching at the floor,”
The startled couple realised that the room was filling with acrid smoke coming from under the skirting boards, and that there was an electrical buzzing noise under the floorboards.
They called the fire brigade who arrived promptly and traced the source of the smoke. After lifting the floorboards in the bedroom, the firefighters discovered the problem – an incinerated mouse that had chewed through the cables which ran beneath the bedroom floor.
The mouse had been electrocuted and was beginning to burn up along with the wooden joists. By gnawing through the cable, not only had the unfortunate mouse killed itself but could have killed them as well.
There is enough fat in the body of even a small animal to start a fire which, in this case, had spread to the floor joists which were blackened and burned and about to burst into flames.
It was only thanks to Tilly’s sensitive nose that a major tragedy was averted. Although there was a smoke detector on the landing outside the bedroom, it hadn’t yet activated.
So interested were the firefighters in the cause of the fire that they took photographs of the remains of the mouse and the chewed wires for their records.
Photo courtesy of Graham Howlett, Alton Firestation
Based on an article in the Alton Herald, by kind permission
