12-Year-Old Stays Up Late to Play Video Games, Saves Family From House Fire

Forget what your parents told you—playing video games might just save your life and your home.

According to WKYT, Jaxxyn Wood, a 12-year-old Danville, Ky. boy, was playing video games at 3:30 a.m. when he noticed a strong smell coming from the kitchen, "something really bad," said Wood, "like Legos on fire." It turns out the ice maker attached to the fridge had caught fire.

Luckily, Wood was able to stay calm and knew what to do thanks to a recent visit from local firefighters to his school.

"A fireman came to our school and he said if there's ever a fire there's most likely gonna be smoke in the air...So you want to duck down and get everyone you can and get out," said Wood. 

When Jaxxyn spotted the smoke, he ducked down and crawled towards the kitchen and saw that the ice maker was on fire. He tried to put out the fire himself, but it quickly became apparent that evacuating everyone was the right choice.

"I grabbed a plastic cup of water and put it out as much as I could, and then I went and got everybody."

Wood was able to wake up his sisters, who then woke up everyone else and got the family out of the house. All told, nine people were in the house at the time, and all made it out safely. Adding to this amazing story, firefighters later determined that there were no working smoke detectors in the house, so if Jaxxyn was not awake that late this story could have taken a much more tragic turn.

Firefighters were able to contain the fire in the kitchen as well as the dining areas of the first floor of the building. However, the second and third stories of the home suffered heavy smoke damage. Firefighters in Danville and elsewhere stress the importance of making sure that smoke detectors work, and many firefighter departments offer free smoke detectors. Firefighters recommend testing your smoke detectors every six months.