Family escapes fire thanks to detector

URBANA -- A family's quick thinking is the reason they survived a fire. The blaze destroyed their mobile home Friday afternoon. It happened in the 1800-block of Liberty Avenue.

Nobody inside was seriously hurt. Firefighters say that's thanks to a teen who didn't hesitate when faced with flames.

Smoke at the scene made it difficult to see. But all that remained behind the gray haze was a charred reminder of how intense this fire once was.

"One of the daughters walked down the hall to investigate and when she opened a door there were flames so they just got everybody out," said Jamie Davis of the American Red Cross.

Unfortunately their two pet cats weren't so lucky.

"It's pretty tough, it's pretty tough," she said. "It is very emotional for folks to lose pets, I think that's just on top of everything else that's going on."

Despite losing pets and roof over their heads, the family knows things could have been worse. A smoke alarm inside the home tipped them off that something was wrong.

"They said it would go off every now and then, it would say 'test'. And this time it didn't say test. So they went and checked it out. There were flames in the one of the rooms," said Davis.

The teen immediately got her mother and 16-month-old daughter outside to safety. A simple decision, but one firefighters say might not have happened without their detector.

"It's a life-saving device," said Carroll Fire Department Chief David Lawrence. "And the smoke detector did its job. The occupants did what they were supposed to. They lefts and did not go back in. They left it to us to fight the fire."

The teen and her mom inhaled some smoke, but both are doing fine. No word yet on what caused the fire.

The American Red Cross responded to the scene. It's given the family a hotel room to stay at for three days. It's also helping them with food, clothes and other immediate needs.

But that's not all it provides. Volunteers make sure to give the family emotional support. They're trained to help them cope with tragic situations.

"These are very much disasters for the people involved here. And that's what we do. We need a lot more volunteers to come out to spend maybe a week a month, or a weekend a month, to be on call, to be able to come out and help people that have mainly local housing fires," said volunteer John Lewis.

Volunteers like Lewis help with a range of disasters including severe weather and house fires. To join, click here!

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