PANAMA CITY — A dog and three cats died in an afternoon duplex fire before emergency crews could pull the animals from the suffocating smoke.
Panama City Fire Department (PCFD) responded at about 1 p.m. Wednesday to a call of thick smoke emitting from a duplex at 209 W. 12th St. The resident said he left a pot cooking on the stove before absent-mindedly leaving for work. A neighbor called PCFD before the thick plumes of smoke emitting from next door turned into an all-out blaze.
However, a brindle bulldog named Sunday and three cats, Nubby, Bunny and Stash, perished in the fire due to smoke inhalation.
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“It’s all my fault,” said a shaken and visibly upset Michael Tweedy, resident of the home. “I put a pot of boiling chicken on the stove, forgot it was there and went in to work. This is awful.”
Neighbor Mattie Hoffman said she smelled smoke moments earlier and thought her air conditioning had caught fire. She couldn’t find the source of the smell before stepping outside to see smoke seeping from the next-door unit. She called PCFD and Tweedy and sought shelter outside to await fire crews to enter the unit, she said.
“I don’t know what I’m going to do now,” Hoffman said. “What I’m wearing is what I got. Everything I own is in there.”
Hoffman said she had relatives to stay with if the home was uninhabitable.