Two people and one dog escaped a McComb house fire early Thursday morning, but three of the family’s dogs did not.
JoAnn Rayborn and boyfriend Harry Bates woke to their dog Reba desperately trying to wake them about 4 a.m.
“She usually wakes me up to take her out about that time, but this time she wouldn’t let up,” Rayborn said. “When I got up I asked (Bates), ‘Are you smoking in here?’ ”
Smoke billowed into the house at 715 Fifth St. from a bedroom across the hall.
It’s unclear how the fire started in the unoccupied room.
McComb Fire Department Capt. David Fischer said in a press release the fire remains under investigation.
Flames burst through the doorway and throughout the home when Rayborn looked in the room before fleeing with Reba and Bates outside.
Three of the couple’s dogs, Pekingese poodle mixes Goob and Trixie and a chihuahua, Hobo, normally would have followed the couple out of the room. Bur when Rayborn and Bates made it outside, they discovered none of the other dogs had come with them.
“We could hear Goob barking when we tried to get to the bedroom window,” Rayborn said. “I kept trying, ‘Goob, jump up here. Jump up here.’ ”
The three dogs died from smoke inhalation in their bedroom. Bates buried them in the back yard later Thursday morning.
The fire gutted both bedrooms and left the house smoky and charred.
Pictures, the television and ceiling fan dripped water from melted, burned plastic as the couple sorted through what could be salvaged.
Although the fire didn’t spread to outlying buildings or the couple’s camper, the damage was done.
The couple credited a passerby early in the morning for calling the fire department as they ran outside, having left their phones in the bedroom.
Bates said he and Rayborn owed their lives to the only surviving dog.
“If it weren’t for Reba right there, we would be in the morgue right now,” Bates said.
It wasn’t Rayborn’s first house fire. She lived in the McComb house for 25 years after losing her previous home off Highway 51 in a fire.
A diabetic, Rayborn managed to save some of her medication and most of what was in her purse by the bed. Her phone sustained water damage and hasn’t worked since she recovered it.
Rayborn said the Red Cross was coming at some point Thursday. The couple lost nearly everything except the clothes on their backs to smoke, fire or water damage.
