GOOD SAMARITAN RESCUES TRAPPED DOG FROM INFERNO
A pre-dawn four-alarm fire in Dracut yesterday sent an elderly woman scrambling into the cold as it ripped through a beloved family home.
“It was all smoke, all smoke in the house,” said Elaine Buote, 76, who owns the house. “I was in
that house when I was 10 years old. I stayed there until I got married,”
The fire appeared to start in one corner of the house, but quickly spread throughout the rest of the house.
As Buote scrambled to get outside, one of her beloved Yorkies would not come. But just as she was walking down the driveway, 20-year-old Michael Patenaude pulled over. As Patenaude called 911, Buote told Patenaude — whom she had never met — there was still a dog inside the house. With first responders not yet there and no one else in sight, Patenaude did the only thing he could think of: cover his face as much as possible and run into the flames.
“He went and he brought her out, and I said, ‘Thank you, thank you,’ ” Buote said. “I thanked him over and over again for what he did; that was very courageous of him.”
Patenaude said he never stopped to think about what he was doing.
“There was a living thing in that house still,” he said. “If my dogs were in here, I’d want somebody to grab them.”
Buote said she’s had the dogs — Libby and Petunia — for about eight years, and both were puppies delivered by other dogs she owned.
“It’s just me and them,” she said. “They’re with me all the time. If I’m in the kitchen, they follow me; if I’m on the porch, they follow me.”
The home was built by Buote’s father in 1949. Buote left when she got married, but moved back in to take care of her father after her mother died.
“There’s a lot of memories in this house. My grandparents had a pool back there, my grandfather’s vegetable garden,” Donna Buote, Elaine Buote’s daughter, said through tears.
Donna Buote said the house is a total loss, but the family plans to rebuild.