Dogs alert owners in Rockledge to rapidly spreading house fire

ROCKLEDGE – Not all dogs wear a superhero cape, but for a Yorkie – and a neighborhood dog – that changed after both dogs alerted their owners to a devastating house fire nearby.

Two Rockledge neighbors were awakened by the barking of their dogs around 4 a.m. Saturday morning and were able to run outside to see the orange glow and massive flames burning through a home at 3871 La Flor Drive.

Sean Mirsky was awakened by Minnie Falcon, a one-and-a-half-year-old Yorkshire Terrier, and quickly ran into the smoke- and flame-filled house to rescue a woman and her Shih Tzu as the fire destroyed the garage.

“It was the middle of the night and Minnie was barking and growling. She led me down the stairs and I could hear my door rattling. I opened the door and felt the heat. My neighbor’s house was an inferno,” said Mirsky, who then woke up his family to leave the house for fear the fire in the neighboring house would spread to his.

“Everyone was sleeping,” he said.

Mirsky, the 47-year-old co-founder and chief strategy officer of rocket engine maker Vaya Space, still wearing a T-shirt and boxer shorts, ran barefoot to the house to get the attention of the neighbor, who was using a walker and was in the house that was completely engulfed in flames.

“I could hear her inside calling, ‘Help me, help me.’ She normally goes for walks with her walker. Both she and her husband keep pretty much to themselves. I was able to carry her and her Shih Tzu out of the house,” he said, adding that the woman’s husband had left for work shortly before the fire started.