A Parksville woman credited her dog with waking her up during a house fire that destroyed her home early Thursday morning.
Teryn Dyck said she initially thought Kairi needed to go outside to pee, but it turned out there was a reason the animal was so insistent.
“I opened up the door to the basement and a wall of smoke poured out into my room and that’s when I realized something’s really wrong,” said Dyck.
When she ran outside with her pets, she said the whole upper right half of the house was on fire — her tenant made it out of their suite at the same time.
Dyck said she ran inside to grab a few valuables and then set about warning the neighbours because she was concerned the fire could spread.
Parksville fire department responded around 4 a.m. and got the fire under control in about an hour and a half, according to Steven Liedl, assistant fire chief.
“There was heavy fire coming from the building. Our firefighters were able to extinguish and overhaul and able to put it out,” said Liedl.
The cause of the fire will be investigated, Liedl said. Nobody was injured, but two vehicles were damaged by the heat.
Dyck said she sleeps with earplugs in and did not hear the smoke alarms — she added she thought it might be possible the upstairs alarms could have been destroyed by the time she was alerted. Dyck said if Kairi was not insistent, she would have gone back to sleep.
“She really is the saviour of the hour,” said Dyck. She and her dad will stay in a hotel for a few days, thanks to an emergency service, but after that she does not know what they will do.
One of Dyck’s friends set up a GoFundMe page to help the family recover after most of their possessions were destroyed in the fire.
