Family devastated as fire claims dog
IN his darkest moments, Dan Wright relied on his dog Sniper to help pull him through a health crisis.
Yesterday, the two-yearold America staffy cross was killed as he tried to find Mr Wright in a house fire, leaving the family reeling at the loss of a much-loved pet and the destruction of their 150year-old home at Yatala.
Mother of eight Lynne Wright said the dog, who she described as “gentle, gorgeous and happy”, had helped her son through depression.
“Sniper stuck by my son’s side like super glue. For the past two years he has been battling depression,” she said.
Sniper and his brother Boss were adopted by Dan and his brother Jack.
“Sniper came along at the right time and now he’s gone. I don’t know how Dan’s going to cope,” Ms Wright said.
“Dan is devastated, we all are. We didn’t care about the house, we didn’t care if the other (main) house had gone up, we just wanted him safe. Now we can’t get him back.”
The old timber house was one of two on the large Pearson Rd block the family moved to 26 years ago. Ms Wright’s husband Danny, a former house removalist, had relocated the buildings there.
Son Dan, 24, lived with his dog in one house and the rest of the family – Ms Wright, her husband, three daughters, one daughter’s partner, a two-month-old baby and several other dogs – in the other.
Ms Wright alerted the family to the blaze about 3.30am yesterday as she left for work.
“I saw an orange glow through the house,” she said. “I looked in one of the rooms. It looked like a light or heater on the ground on fire.
“I screamed to my son, ‘get up, get up, the room is on fire’. He went into the room and started trying to get what was burning out of the house.
“I was screaming to everyone to get out of the other house. We didn’t know if or how fast it was going to spread, so we got everyone and all the dogs out.”
The home did not have smoke alarms.
“My son got into the car to race to the bottom of the hill to wait for the fire crews. We live on a block where nobody knows where we are,’’ Ms Wright said. “Sniper had run off and gone looking for him in the house. We only heard him at the last minute. My husband ran under the house to rip the floorboards open to get him out, but he couldn’t.”
She said her son broke down when they told him ‘he’d gone back in for you and can’t find you’.
Beenleigh Station officer Phil Marchant said fire crews from Beenleigh, Loganlea, Woodridge and Helensvale responded to the fire with 18 fire fighers attending the property.
Investigations into the fire are continuing.