Dog warns of house fire

It wasn't the wake-up that Isabella Lynch was expecting for her birthday yesterday. 

The Templeton woman was woken at about 1am on Tuesday morning - her 75th birthday - by the barking of her dog Chloe, letting her know the garage attached to her house was on fire.

"I woke up and heard a big bang and at first I thought it was just another earthquake. But Chloe was barking and jumping on top of me and I realised something was seriously wrong. She was telling me to get moving."

Mrs Lynch woke up her husband, Mike, and followed Chloe into the corridor.

"It was pitch black because the power was out and then the smoke alarms started going off. We realised the garage was on fire. We had been drying our clothes at night-time, like they tell you to do, and the dryer had caught on fire."

Mrs Lynch quickly rang the fire services while her husband took to the fire with the garden hose.

"I couldn't see anything and I had to scramble for the landline. My husband went and put the hose on it; he had it mostly out by the time they arrived."

Fire services arrived to extinguish the fire and Mr and Mrs Lynch were taken by ambulance to hospital where they were treated overnight for smoke inhalation.

They arrived home to find their Railway Tce home blackened with extensive smoke damage. Their washing machine and dryer were ruined.

"It's pretty heartbreaking. It's not really what I wanted to happen, especially on my birthday. It wasn't an old dryer. But hopefully they can clean it all up."

Mr and Mrs Lynch's son's white Porsche had been in the garage, but was fortunately not damaged.

"It's just dirty, not damaged, luckily. We rang him up and told him he had a black Porsche now!"

Mrs Lynch planned to spend the rest of her birthday cleaning and sorting out insurance.

The heroic Chloe, a six-year-old japanese spitz, had been coated in a layer of soot after the incident and was yesterday off to the groomers to get cleaned up.

"She's a very good girl," Mrs Lynch said.