BIXBY, Okla. — A Bixby dog and her love for donuts could have cost one family its home.
Jessica Hopwood says her family woke up to smoke alarms going off just after midnight but it wasn’t until they watched back home surveillance video that they understood what really happened.
Their 150 lb. Great Dane “V” can be seen walking into the kitchen and less than two minutes after she leaves the smoke starts. It turns out there was a donut box left on the stove and when V tried to grab a snack, she flipped on the burner, which set the box on fire.
“Her name is Veretta Sue when she’s in trouble,” Jessica Hopwood says. “Everyone calls her ‘V’ though.”
The entire Hopwood family made it out of the home safely.
“It was kind of all in a panic,” Hopwood explained. “In that situation, you just kind of go into survival mode and hope that you can get everything... I mean we even got the hamster out.”
The damage was minimal, sticking to the back of the stove. Bixby Fire Marshall Nick Flanary says it could have been so much worse though.
Flanary says this is the perfect example of why smoke detectors are so important, adding that the family was able to mitigate the problem before it got worse because their smoke detectors went off. He says smoke detectors need to be installed inside every bedroom, outside each sleeping area and on each floor of the home at a minimum.
It is also important that you family have an escape plan, which the Hopwoods did.
“That way when the fire department shows up we can ask if everyone is out,” the fire marshall says. “If someone is unaccounted for then we know we need to search for somebody.”
This actually isn’t even the first time a pet has started a fire in Bixby.
“I believe we have had a dog trying to get some pizza out of a pizza box,” he says.
Flanary says the video shows why it is so important not to leave anything stored on a stove top or near it. He says even if you don’t have a four-legged family member, accidents can still happen.
©2023 Imagicomm Tulsa, Inc.