Jason Bailey had good timing on Monday.
The 18-year-old student at DeVry Technical Institute in Kansas City, Mo., returned home to his rental house at 1207 R.I. and heard smoke alarms going off.
"I came home from school, and I opened up the door, and I heard the fire alarms, and it was just filling up with smoke," he said.
Lawrence-Douglas County Fire & Medical crews at 2:55 p.m. Monday were called to the residence, where a fire was discovered inside a wall on the southwest corner of the two-story, older home.
"We had a small fire in an exterior wall that started on the bottom and extended up," said Lawrence-Douglas County Fire & Medical Battalion Chief Dan Morrow. "We had to tear into the wall to get to the fire, but we got it out."
It took fire and medical crews about 10 minutes to tear into the wall and extinguish the blaze.
Damage was estimated at $2,500.
The cause was an electrical short in an appliance cord, Morrow said.
Bailey's two dogs were not injured in the fire.
He and his sister, who also lives in the house, also have three cats. The cats ran to the basement, which was not affected by the fire, he said.
The owner of the house, William Jackson of Topeka, was being contacted, and officials were trying to determine if the residence was safe for continued habitation.
Bailey said he and his sister had a place where they could stay if the house was deemed temporarily uninhabitable.
-- Michael Dekker's phone message number is 832-7187. His e-mail address is mdekker@ljworld.com.
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