10-year-old smells smoke, alerts family of house fire

EL MIRAGE, Ariz. (KSAZ) - Firefighters say more than a dozen people are safe after a 10-year-old girl smelled smoke and alerted her grandparents of a house fire inside a west Valley home.

"There's smoke, there's smoke," Irene Hernandez said.

Those are the words that Irene Hernandez says her granddaughter, Genesis, repeated when she woke her up at around 1 a.m.

"She came into the room, she told my husband and me, my husband is the one that went outside," she said.

Hernandez followed her husband outside and after looking around they found smoke pouring out of their attic. Hernandez went back inside to wake up the nine other family members who live there and the four grandchildren who were sleeping over, including Genesis.

"I didn't want anybody hurt," Hernandez said. "I ran inside, I started calling everybody. My husband called my other daughter, we got everybody out. We started getting all the kids."

The El Mirage Fire Department believe the fire was electrical and that it started outside and eventually spread to the attic. The cause of the fire remains under investigation.

The fire department says there were smoke detectors inside the home, but non were working. Hernandez says the first thing she plans to do is make sure new batteries are put in.

"We're going to get new fire things on, we got to because, you know, next time who knows," she said. "I am very grateful for my granddaughter to have smelled that. I am grateful for that."

The family will be displaced for a few days while power is restored and the electrical box is fixed. They know it could have been worse and say Genesis is a hero for her quick thinking.