PAGADIAN CITY, Zamboanga del Sur— “If not for the continuous loud barking of our pet dog, Fadjie, all of the 13 members of my family would have been burned alive.”
So said Victoria Ensong, 66, a retired widowed teacher, as she saw her house at Purok Sampaguita, Barangay Balangasan here being engulfed by flames together with some 40 other nearby residences at midnight on Tuesday.
Ensong recounted that while she, her four children and eight grandchildren were fast asleep, she was awakened by the loud barking of Fadjie, chained on the neck near their door post. She initially ignored the barking because the dog would often bark at passersby.
But when the dog did not stop barking for the next 10 minutes, Ensong asked her oldest daughter to open the door and was shocked to see “that our neighbors’ houses were all on fire with their occupants running wildly carrying their belongings.”
Ensong quickly woke up all her family members and told them to rush out of their house taking with them whatever they could carry as she pulled out to safety her crying grandchildren.
Soon firemen, led by City Fire Chief Inspector Ferdie Morales, arrived and put the fire under control. The fire destroyed an estimated P1 million worth of property.
Fadjie’s heroism resembles that of Zamboanga City’s canine hero Kabang which lost the upper part of its mouth when it was hit by a tricycle as it saved a child, on his way to school, from being run over by the vehicle.