Father badly burned trying to save family dogs from burning house in Moss Beach

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A man was badly burned in an early Tuesday morning house fire in San Mateo County. The fire broke out at a home on Lancaster Boulevard in Moss Beach. 

Alessandra White lives at the home with her husband and adult son. She said they were all asleep, when she woke up around 3 a.m. to the sound of a neighbor screaming.

”I asked my husband to turn off the heat because I was so hot inside the house,” said White. “He opened the window to look outside to see and then he said, 'Oh my God.' The fire  was already so high.”

The person screaming was her next door neighbor, Arturo Mul. He was trying to warn them about the fire, that was quickly spreading. It reached his unit. They tried to extinguish the flames themselves. 

“We grabbed hoses, tried to put it put. But it kept growing,” said Mul. “Then there were some kind of explosions that kept lighting everything up. We had to run, because I got scared. I got scared.”

Ken Lord, battalion chief with the Coastside Fire Protection District, said the home is a total loss. “Fire was coming outside of the structure and there was some extension into vegetation,” said Lord. 

White says they all initially got out safely. But then her husband ran back inside to save their two dogs.

“He said, ‘Oh my God, the dogs!’ Then he run in direction of fire and he disappeared there. He saved the dogs. But now he is in hospital in critical condition,” she said.

White said they do not have health insurance, and her husband will require surgery. She’s planning to set up a GoFundMe account in hopes of getting some donations. 

“It’s sad because we got this house, we work hard for the house. And now everything is gone.”