SMOKE ALARM SAVES A YUCCA VALLEY HOME

A Yucca Valley family was very fortunate that they were home Tuesday morning when their smoke alarm went off alerting them to a fire in the house. According to County Battalion Chief Rick Denison, the family had a plug-in air freshener plugged into an outlet in a closet that had been added in a back room. Denison said it’s unclear whether the plug-in air freshener or the outlet had a malfunction, but when the family members went to check out the smoke alarm about 11:45 a.m., they saw the closet area on fire, smoke coming out of the outlet and traveling up the wall. Denison said the heat made a window in the closet shatter and started the curtains on fire. Firefighters responded and quickly put out the fire at the home in the 56900 block of Crestview. No one was injured in the fire, and Denison said the smoke alarm helped keep the fire from being worse than it was.