Two young children are credited with alerting their sleeping parents and preventing a possible disastrous house fire at 1211 Albany St., London, early Sunday morning.
Harley Bett, 26, and his wife, Kathryn, were sleeping in a downstairs bedroom and their children, Sherry, 4, and Tom, 2, were in an upstairs bedroom when heavy smoke woke the children shortly after 6 a.m.
They began shouting and at about the same time an upstairs window broke from the heat buildup.
“It could have been a different story but for all that yelling,” said District Fire Chief Ed Weston.
Bett said the children’s shouts woke them up.
He said the four got out of the smoke-filled house and made it to the next-door home of Lorne Gives, who called the fire department.
Weston said the fire started in a couch in the livingroom. He set damage at between $5,000 and $7,000. He said the fire was confined to the livingroom.
Bett and his family later took refuge at the residence of a relative, A. W. Seymour, 470 Scenic Dr.
