At about 2 p.m. Tuesday, Eleanor Laurent walked by a window in her Douglas home and saw huge clouds of black smoke billowing from her shed.
Thinking it was her husband Jim Laurent’s burn barrel, she asked him if there should be a fire in the couple’s front yard.
He sprang into action, grabbed a garden hose to attack the flames and sent her to take the couple’s daughter and dog out of harm’s way
“He had me drive his truck down and our car down and Abigail and the dog down to the street and I called 911 on my cell phone and I kept losing connection with them. It was a little stressful there for a few minutes but then they got here and now we have no more shed.”
The couple’s cat is still missing.
“Hopefully our cat — I’m sure she’s outside somewhere — hopefully she’ll come home after all of this. She’s very skittish, so I’m sure she’s a couple of miles from here by now,” Eleanor said.
While no one was injured, Jim said the fire took a lot. It destroyed their shed and their boat, which was parked nearby.
By the time he got outside, he said he couldn’t get within 5 feet of the building because of the unendurable heat.
11-year-old Abigail’s new bicycle was parked inside, as was Jim’s dirt bike and all of his tools.
Eleanor said it was Jim’s quick actions that kept the fire away from the family’s home.
“Yeah, I gotta say he was Johnny on the Spot,” Eleanor said. “I wouldn’t have known what to do first, but he was totally on it. He had me flip all the breakers first thing and then, he was, I’m really proud of him, he was totally right on it.”
The family is getting ready to move to Idaho in August. Eleanor said she hopes the loss won’t impact their plans. But, she said, she’s thankful that her neighbors in Douglas showed up to help as soon as the flames were visible.
The fire was almost completely extinguished about an hour later, though smoke was still visible for miles.
