Teen saves four families from fire
A 15-year-old teen from Rotterdam, Felix, became the hero of Mühlbach am Hochkönig, a village in Austria, where his family was vacationing, when he saved his family and 3 other families they were vacationing with from a fire. The chalet burned down to the ground on the night from Friday to Saturday.
'Felix is a light sleeper. If he hadn't been here, we might've lost the children,' said Alex Verburg, one of the fathers of the affected families, who went on to say: 'he heard some crackling around 03:00 in the morning and went to check it out. When he saw the fire he immediately called out at the top of his lungs: 'fire, fire, fire,' through the house.' The 4 families, 8 adults and 7 children, have been going on winter sport vacations together for many years now. None of them were hurt. They returned home after spending a night at a hotel. The children were still very shaken up and were too afraid to be in a room by themselves. 'Everybody had a good cry.' Oddly enough it wasn't the first time for one of the families to face a fire during their vacations. Last year an Austrian hotel they were staying at burned down. An old stove had caught fire. The families decided to bring their own smoke detectors, but lucky for them Alex proved to be the best smoke detector, by waking up before the detectors went off. Attempts to put out the fire in the chalet were quickly ceased as the fire spread too rapidly. The only fire extinguisher turned out to be in the basement. The cause of the fire is still unknown.