LOCAL : Girl, 10, Smelled Smoke, May Have Saved Lives of 5 in Family
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A 10-year-old girl who awoke today to the smell of smoke in her Panorama City home helped alert and evacuate her family and was being credited by the Los Angeles Fire Department with possibly saving their lives.
Raquel Guerrero said her spot on the top bed of a set of bunk beds may have allowed her to smell smoke before anyone else in the house in the 14100 block of Terra Bella Street. She jumped down after waking about 1 a.m. and woke her 15-year-old brother, Romie, who was on the bottom bunk.
The two children then went through the smoke-filled house and woke their elderly grandparents and an uncle. Everyone escaped without injury.
“I just tried to get everybody out as fast as we could,” Raquel said after the fire was out.
Battalion Chief Robert Teachenor said the fire started in the bedroom of the girl’s mother, Rosina Robinson, when a votive candle left unattended burned down. Robinson was at work at the time of the fire.
After firefighters arrived, they searched the house and saved five family pets--a dog and four kittens, Teachenor said.
Damage to the house was estimated at about $50,000.
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