Ginger Blossom, owner of a store by the same name in Richmond, credited a family dog with waking her up early Sunday and alerting her to an attic fire in the Route 173 property.
“She’s my little hero dog,” Blossom said on Monday. “I didn’t know anything was amiss.”
The fire was at the main house and did not affect the other buildings on the old dairy farm that houses Blossom’s import business of fair trade items including crafts, clothing and art.
The farm, at 3016 Route 173, west of Antioch, is known for its metal animal sculptures that can be seen from the highway.
According to Richmond Fire Protection Chief Rick Gallas, the first firefighters arrived on the scene at 6:30 a.m. Sunday.
“We had flames coming off the back, and smoke,” Gallas said “The homeowner was awakened by her dog, and there were no working smoke detectors in that area of the house.”
Gallas said damage was estimated at $40,000, and the cause of the fire is under investigation but could be electrical.
With no hydrants in the area, Gallas said an extra alarm was called to bring more tanker trucks to the scene.
“We had 90 percent of the fire out in 15 minutes and the rest in a half-hour,” Gallas said. “We had to pull the ceiling to make sure we got it all.”
Blossom said after being awakened by her dog, Emie, she called 911, put Emie in a car parked a safe distance from the house, and propped open the front door so her cats could escape. She said she then took a hose out and started to try and slow the fire down.
“The fire department was there in about 8 minutes,” she said. “They were phenomenal; they were very quick.”
She said Emie has been her hero dog “on multiple occasions,” including once when the dog chased off a coyote that was stalking a smaller dog, and another time when she brought Emie to a forest preserve for a walk and ran into a suspicious man who Emie made sure never got too close.
She said the business was open on Monday, and that she and all her animals were uninjured.
Twitter @abderholden
