Dog wakes family in burning house

A frantic dog woke a man and his three daughters after a fire filled their Te Awamutu house with smoke early today.

The man and his daughters were sleeping in the upstairs rooms of the house when he was woken by his dog which went "off his head" shortly after 5am when fire broke out in a downstairs garage and began to fill the house with smoke.

Soon after the dog raised the alarm, the smoke alarms went off and the man's wife returned from her paper run. She saw smoke coming from the house and called the fire service, said Te Awamutu deputy chief fire chief, Murry Gillard.

"Everything was right. It was all going for them," he said.

However, Mr Gillard said smoke could be fatal and the man made the right choice to get out of the house, even though the fire was small.

"They got out onto the roof and then onto some decking and us and the neighbours got them down via ladders.

"It was only a small fire in the garage on the ground floor and they were on the top floor."

However, Mr Gillard said the smoke was right through the house and could easily have overcome the man and his three daughters.

He said had the fire began an hour earlier when the family was in a deeper sleep, it could have been a tragedy.

The fire was thought to have started in the electric motor of an appliance in the garage.

- NZPA