They say that dogs are man’s best friend. But they can sometimes be our greatest protectors too. A woman in Baldwinsville, New York is thanking her Pit Bull after the dog warned her of a fire in her apartment building. The dog’s signal saved Angela Murray’s life and now the dog is being heralded a hero for his quick thinking.
Murray said she was sleeping on January 24, a little before 10 pm, when she heard something. It was her Pit Bull, Rocco, barking — “Barking worse than usual,” Murray told Syracuse.com.
“I could faintly hear the alarm going off,” she added. It was just the nudge the woman needed to investigate.
“I went to the living room where he kept barking and I’m hearing ‘pop pop pop’ in the ceiling,” she said. “I’m like ‘oh no, this is real.’”
The dog mom knew it was time to act. She went upstairs and dressed quickly in sweatpants, before turning to Rocco and putting him on his leash. At first, Murray tried to escape through her front door, but already the fire that was ripping through her apartment complex was too great.
“I’m on the top floor but I could see stuff flying, debris,” she said. They then went to the backdoor and managed to make it down a back staircase. Murray was lucky. She got out in the nick of time. She recalled looking back at the staircase that saved her life — it was completely engulfed in flames. Had she left even one minute later, the worst could’ve happened.
“If I had stopped to get my glasses or look for my wallet… nope, I wouldn’t have made it out,” she told the news outlet.
Firefighters arrived on the scene and put out the flames, which tore through two of the buildings in the New Legacy Apartments complex at 1 Legacy Drive. The roofs of the buildings reportedly collapsed. In total, 24 apartments were destroyed or damaged because of the fire.
Thankfully, it seems that no one was seriously hurt. Although an 80-year-old man was brought to the hospital for smoke inhalation.
Murray later told the news outlet that several of her neighbors credit Rocco (and his barking) for making sure they got out safe.
“A couple of tenants are calling him the ‘hero dog,’” she said. “They said they never hear him bark but he was barking out of control that something was wrong.”
“That’s our hero dog!” one resident told the news outlet. “He deserves an award or something!”