NORTH NAPLES, Fla. -- A Southwest Florida family is safe after a mini fridge caught fire in their home. “I just wanted to get them out of the house real quick and put it out,” said Austin West.
12-year-old Austin West was up past his bedtime playing X-box when he smelt something burning. After realizing it was coming from his brother's bedroom he quickly woke all four of his siblings up and brought them downstairs."
“Then Austin took the nanny to show her where the fire extinguisher was, and the two of them came back up and put out the fire together,” Jennie West, Austin's Mom.
“I told here to pull the pin because she was really really nervous and going like this, she pulled the pin and put the fire out,” said Austin.
Jennie and her husband Dave were on vacation, a parent's worst nightmare, "we felt powerless because we were stuck we couldn’t get back to town, we were stuck, our hands were tied, and that was extremely hard to sit there and hope everything was okay,” said Jennie.
Thankfully the West's nanny Mary and Austin took down the flames with a fire extinguisher.
“You tell them stuff about like fire or where the fire extinguisher was, but I guess he was listening, he knew where the fire extinguisher was and he did it,” said Jennie.
The North Naples Fire Department said had another two minutes gone by, the outcome would've been very different. The West family installed more smoke detectors as a precaution. They plan to contact the company that made the mini fridge to find out what caused this fire.
Jennie says the biggest takeaway as a parent of five children, "As much fighting as we have going on amongst the boys the first thing he (Austin) did was protect his family and I think that was pretty profound.”
