Young boy saves entire family from devastating house fire in Canada

'He doesn’t understand that he’s the only reason we got out'

The family's fire alarm did not go off (GoFundMe)

A family in Canada have been saved from a devastating fire that tore through their home after the youngest son woke his mother to raise the alarm.

Eleven-year-old David Lutgendorf was FaceTiming his father at his home in Glovertown, Newfoundland, when he noticed the flames.

He was the only family member awake at the time and rushed to rouse his mother and sister.

“Within seconds of him getting us up, the flames were everywhere,” his mother, Marcy Smith, told the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation.

"It happened so fast,” she said, describing how the flames “ate around” her and her son as they stood in their kitchen by a wood stove.

“The entire kitchen just disappeared while we were standing in it,” she said.

Ms Smith and her two children escaped the house, but their dog, Marley, cats and pet rats were unable to be saved.

The fire is understood to have been started after Ms Smith burned some rubbish in her wood stove, which she told the publication she had done “a thousand times”.

The family’s fire alarm did not go off and they were left with nothing but the pyjamas they had been wearing when they escaped the house.

A GoFundMe page has been set up by Ms Smith’s sister-in-law on behalf of the family, explaining that they had lost everything, including most of their pets, in the fire.

Both children were left unharmed by the fire, but Ms Smith was burned on one of her arms and one leg, it states.

“Please folks reach out and help, nobody deserves to have something this horrible happen,” sister-in-law Mae Smith-Ward wrote.

People have donated over $1,200 (£730) in the space of three days though the GoFundMe page.

Ms Smith told the CBC she is grateful for her son’s actions and the donations her family has received from the community since the fire.

People have already given shoes, clothes and money for food to the family, with one anonymous person giving David a bike.

Ms Smith added that her son does not realise how significant his actions were in helping the family to escape with their lives.

All he understands is that they three of them got out of the house, “he doesn’t understand that he’s the only reason we did,” she said.