Wendy WilliamsBy Wendy Williams
A DUO of heroic pets have saved a family of eight from a devastating house fire.
Dogs Simba, a Shar Pei, and Nala, a Chihuahua, woke up the Fernandez Guerrero family one by one after smoke filled the family home in Granada.
The fire, which was caused by a short circuit, broke out while the family of eight were sleeping last Wednesday night.
“It was a nightmare and we are only alive thanks to the dogs,” said Antonio Fernandez, 67, a retired businessman.
His wife, Lola, 66, was asleep downstairs with two of her grandchildren, aged five and nine, while the rest of the family was upstairs.
But the quick thinking pets split up to rouse their owners and lead them to safety.
The house was destroyed in the blaze but the family had a lucky escape.
The five adults and three children all escaped unhurt, although Simba, the hero of the story, had to be treated for smoke inhalation.
“We own him our lives and we will never be able to repay what he has done for us,” owner Leticia said.
Meanwhile one of the firemen who helped put out the blaze added: “If the dog had not noticed in time, the smoke inhalation would have killed them all.”
For those of you without heroic pets, GET A SMOKE ALARM.Plus, considering the apalling lack of health and safety rules in Spain,even more importantly, add a carbon monoxide alarm too.Pets and you can’t smell that stuff when it leaks from your gas boiler, woodburner etc.
what a wonderful story buy these dogs the biggest bones in the world ……
Two biggest causes of house fires are nicotine junkies and electrical wiring.
Did you know that Spanish house wiring is deliberately under rated. No smoke detectors, no fire doors, no yearly inspection of gas boilers, apparently this has changed. The gas boiler in our rented flat developed a fault – it transpired that the flat owner, an electrician had’nt had it serviced from new – it was 10 years old.
However the worse thing is the steel bars on all ground floor windows and in many cases on first floor windows as well.
Stuart, Think you’ve hit on something here. Those rejas are deadly. Dyson-style engineer required to come up with totally secure, instantly removable, security bars. Thief-proof, but fool-proof, quite a challenge.. Bet there’s a butty in it though. Could call them “Instant Release Rejas”
For centuries it was the norm for neighbours to rob each s’ homes and cortijos, hence the ‘rejas’.
Apparently it is impossible to get home insurance unless you have them fitted to at least the ground floor windows.
There was a big news item about 5 years ago where neighbours of a family in Seville that burned to death trapped behind these rejas attacked the firefighters because they took some time to arrive. Not one of these idiots blamed the rejas for this family’s death – unbelieveable but true.
We had two firefighters living in our apartment block and when I took one of them called Jorge round our flat pointing out all the missing anti-fire measures his re-action was to laugh it off – unbelieveable but true.
Where we live in France, burglary is virtually unknown, though in the big cities as elsewhere burglary is common but still no insurance company insists on rejas, the French would immediately realise the dangerous stupidity of fitting them.