Thanks to the alarm of his dog Key, Mr. Phuoc escaped in time when flames from a forest fire covered half of his house in Northern California.

Mr. Phuoc and his dog Key lost one eye in the fire. Photo: An Do.

“Why do you keep bothering me? Let me sleep!”, Mr. Nguyen Cong Phuoc lay on the bed and scolded the dog Key when he continuously scratched the bedroom door at 1 a.m. on October 9.

At three o’clock in the morning, the Chihuahua dog he had raised for the past 12 years barked even more fiercely, scratched continuously, trying to open the door, causing Mr. Phuoc to jump up and intend to scold the dog.

“When I opened the bedroom door, the fire had burned half of my living room. At that time, there was so much smoke, I couldn’t breathe anymore,” Mr. Phuoc told VnExpress.

Naked, he rushed out without having time to bring anything with him. “I left the house, there was fire all around,” Mr. Phuoc said. He wanted to go back into the house to get his wallet and important documents, but was stopped by a neighbor: “If you go in, you will die.” The living room then collapsed.

Located on a 12-hectare hill among the forests in Fountaingrove, near the city of Santa Rosa, Mr. Nguyen Cong Phuoc’s 4-bedroom villa costs more than one million USD.

But after just a few hours, the villa of this retired real estate developer turned to ashes. Two cars were stuck in the garage, the door could not be opened, but he was lucky to have a pickup truck parked outside the door.

Driving down the hill to escape the fire, he witnessed 5 hundred-year-old oak trees in the garden burned down in just 5 minutes. The deer he used to visit every day now ran through the forest in panic.

Mr. Phuoc, 67 years old, has lived in this hill area for 20 years. His wife passed away 12 years ago, and his two children work in Chicago. He only has his dog Key as a companion.

“If it weren’t for the dog, I would be ash,” he said, telling about his friend and his wife who recently died in their house due to a forest fire.

When he brought Key to the light, he discovered that he was blind in one eye due to flying fire. He is planning when things will calm down to have Key’s surgery. Mr. Phuoc said the dog is very smart and knows how to predict rain by yelping and scratching in the yard.

“My house now has nothing left,” Mr. Phuoc said while staying at the center of the Catholic church. However, this time he is very comfortable and does not have to worry about anything, because the insurance company is responsible for building him a new house on the ground of his old house.

Mr. Phuoc once paid home insurance worth $500,000. The new insurance company immediately signed a check for him for $5,000 to spend, and is currently looking for a house for him to temporarily live in until the new house is built.

The death toll in Northern California due to wildfires has reached 31, while hundreds of people are still missing, and 3,500 buildings were destroyed. This is the most serious forest fire disaster in state history. In Fountaingrove where Mr. Phuoc lives, at least 500 homes were destroyed, according to Press Democrat.

More than 8,000 firefighters and support forces are fighting the fires. “We are far from ending this disaster,” California Wildfire Management Agency Director Ken Pimlott said, according to CNN. The fire was still burning erratically on October 12, he said.