News Reports
Dog alerts owner, dies in fire
Jada's barking warned Bonnie McCutcheon that her house was on fire but then ran back upstairs.
By Joe Eaton
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McCutcheon followed the dog to the first floor to see what was wrong and found flames devouring the wall that separates her living room and kitchen.
"I went to get water to dampen the wall and it just erupted," McCutcheon said an hour later, standing outside the smoking hulk of her eastern Pulaski County home.
McCutcheon, her hair singed at the bangs, lost both her two-story home with the wrap-around porch and the dog that warned her of the fire.
She thinks her clothes dryer started the blaze.
Miller Farris, chief of the Newbern Fire Department, said the house is a total loss. He had not determined how the fire began Monday afternoon, but said he thought it was accidental.
Farris said he arrived soon after the fire started and the house was already engulfed in flames.
"It was coming out of everywhere when I got here, all four corners, top to bottom," he said.
That's the way it was when McCutcheon's neighbor Rick Anderton drove to the burning house to help her save her dog.
McCutcheon had gotten out of the house, but Jada had run back upstairs.
With McCutcheon by his side on the porch, Anderton kicked in the door to try to save the dog.
When the door fell, "it just rolled," he said of the flames and heat that singed their hair. "It was like hitting a wall you couldn't move."
McCutcheon lived alone in the house she has owned since 2002.
She said she has places to stay and is not worried about getting by.
Before the flames were completely doused, a neighbor had already invited her to dinner, she said.