HOUSTON, Texas, USA: An autistic teenager who cannot speak saved the lives of her family after a fire ripped through their home here early on the morning of May 8.
 
The fire broke out shortly after 3 am at the family's duplex. Pat Whitley told News2Houston that the fire broke out in his daughter Sandy's bedroom. "She could have caught on fire because she was sleeping right on the bed," Whitley said. "She could have been burned up."

Whitley said that 17-year-old Sandy, who is autistic, mentally disabled and non-verbal, had saved him and the rest of his family by waking them all up. "I wanted to go back to sleep, and then she kept on wanting me to get up," Whitley said.

He said that, after he got up, he smelled smoke and raced to his daughter's half of the duplex, which is next door to his, and saw the flames quickly spread through her bedroom.
"My first thought was to put it out, but it went up so fast," Whitley said. "It was too much smoke. I started choking, so I just got my daughter and we got out."

Firefighters managed to prevent the blaze from spreading to the other half of the duplex, where Whitley's mother and two other children were sleeping.

"We saw a huge fire of 6 feet - higher than the house and we woke up and it's 3 o'clock in the morning and we were all asleep," said a neighbour, Carolyn Nelson. "It was very scary - very hot."

No injuries were reported. Sandy's part of the duplex had suffered heavy fire and smoke damage, the authorities said.

Fire investigators said that a window air-conditioning unit in Sandy's bedroom may have sparked the blaze.