An observant nine-year-old girl helped her family escape a fire in their McSween Road home Tuesday evening.

The girl noticed an electrical cord in a bedroom was extremely hot and almost glowing. She went to notify her mother, assistant fire chief Ian Josephson said. By the time they returned to the bedroom, a fire had started. The mother and her three children were able to leave the second-storey residence without injury as the blaze quickly spread.

With Fire Prevention Week on the horizon, Josephson praised the girl for doing exactly what educators tell children to do when they spot a fire risk.

"It was very good," he said. "Obviously, she's learned something. She was smart enough to go get her mother and her mother was smart enough to get the kids and get out of the house. That's what we want."

The residence sustained extensive damage, but Josephson said the family has insurance.

Hay fire on Jesperson Road

Fire crews were kept busy Wednesday morning with a stubborn hay fire at a Jesper-son Road farm.

The hay caught fire around 7 a.m. Wednesday, likely from spontaneous combustion, but fire crews were able to snuff out the flames before they could cause serious damage.

"We found numerous hot spots and fire in the barn storage," Josephson told the Times Wednesday morning. "We got there in time, fortunately. . . . The wind was blowing fairly strong from the north so it could have been a different scenario."

The flames proved stubborn, though; crews returned to the barn as the hot hay repeatedly caught fire.