Just Shy of 2, Texas Boy Saves Family From Fire

Before even reaching his second birthday, a Texas toddler is a hero after using the few words he knew to save his parents from a fire, the Washington Post reports. Kayla and Nathan Dahl, who are recovering from COVID-19, say they were sound asleep when their son Brandon woke them up. The couple couldn’t smell the smoke because of their COVID symptoms and weren’t sure what was happening at first when Brandon said, “Mama, hot” and pulled on his mother’s foot while coughing, per ABC News. Kayla Dahl quickly understood Brandon’s urgency—their Alvord, Texas, home was full of flames. None of the smoke detectors had gone off, either.

"We had seconds," Nathan Dahl, a volunteer firefighter himself, told ABC 8. "It's nothing short of a miracle." The parents, little Brandon, and his four siblings escaped safely but literally lost everything else—including the family car. “It’s going to be a long, hard road to get to be where we need to be and to replace those material items,” Kayla Dahl told the Post. “But at the same time, if it wasn’t for my son’s guardian angel that morning, I don’t know where we would be.”

The cause is under investigation, but the family blames a gas heater in the living room. A GoFundMe for the Dahls had raised nearly $10,000 as of Friday and said the family also could use donations of clothes and shoes. Alvord is about an hour from Fort Worth, but it is not clear where the Dahl family is staying. Brandon, meanwhile, will celebrate his second birthday on Sunday. "He saved our entire family," Kayla Dahl told the local ABC affiliate. "I mean, he's our little mini hero." (More hero stories.)