A 10-year-old California girl is being hailed a hero after her quick thinking saved six members of her family from a devastating house fire that destroyed their home of 14 years and killed three of their pets.
Elizabeth “Lizzy” Morgan was awake playing video games in the early hours of 9 June at the family’s home in Oakley, around 50 miles east of San Francisco, when the power suddenly cut out at approximately 3am. “She freaked out and looked out the window to see what was going on,” her mother Nena Morgan told CBS. Lizzy quickly realised the outage was no ordinary fault — smoke and flames had already begun consuming parts of the property.
Together with her brother Lucas, Lizzy rushed through the smoke-filled house, waking everyone and shouting for relatives to get out. Four adults and three children were inside at the time. “My husband got up and verified what was going on,” Nena said. “Flames were already coming through our oldest daughter’s bedroom. It got bad fast.” The family scrambled outside with only the clothes they had been sleeping in, managing to escape moments before the fire tore through much of the house.
Firefighters from the Contra Costa County Fire Protection District responded at 3.29am after callers reported flames in the garage area. Crews faced additional dangers on arrival. “We arrived on scene to have the front of the house on fire, with the power lines between the pole and the house having dropped onto the ground. They were actively arcing, hindering our initial fire attack,” said Fire Chief Jeff Burris.
Two of the family’s dogs and their cat died in the blaze, with one animal believed to have died from smoke inhalation. The cause of the fire remains under investigation. According to KTVU, the family had experienced a separate, unexplained fire in their backyard just two weeks earlier. “Nobody knows why my backyard caught on fire in the middle of the day. Nobody knows why my house caught fire in the middle of the night with all of us in there,” Nena said.
Reflecting on how close the family came to tragedy, Nena added: “I don’t even know if we would have made it if we were all asleep.”
The local community has rallied around the Morgan family, with neighbours and well-wishers offering donations and support as they begin to rebuild after losing their home of 14 years.
