KANSAS CITY, Mo. — A tragedy no family wants to experience was caught on one Kansas City family's Ring doorbell camera, as their home burned down.
Sunday night, Valerie and Alex Bujack were sleeping when their 14-year-old son Carter burst into their room, alerting them to the growing fire inside their home.
"I think Carter saved our family last night," said Valerie Bujack, Carter’s mother. "He woke up, knew something was wrong, smelled something, ran downstairs and got my daughter — his little sister — and they both came running upstairs because at that point smoke had started coming into the house."
Kansas City, Missouri, firefighters responded to a call around 10:50 p.m. for what would become a two-alarm fire on North Adrian Avenue.
While Valerie and her two children escaped out the back door, her husband, Alex, went back upstairs to get the family dog, only to throw him down the stairs before crawling his way out of the fully engulfed home. By then both cars were exploding.
"They were just screaming I mean you can hear my daughter on the ring doorbell I mean she was just screaming, ‘Get out, get out,’" said Valerie.
The time between the first flame being captured on the Bujack's front-door security system to when the home was consumed by flames was just seven minutes.
"If Carter would have hesitated even for a few minutes it could have been a totally different outcome," Valerie said.
Both family cars have been reduced to metal frames, and the home they had just moved into as newlyweds is now charred rubble.
"You just work so hard your whole life for... and then it's just... all you have is in trash bags," Bujack said.
Valerie and Alex still have their wedding rings, and they were able to recover some of Alex's military items from his time in the Army years ago, but they are damaged and melted together.
The Bujack family said the Kansas City Fire Department told them the damage is so bad they can't pinpoint where the fire started but it could possibly be outside.
Fire Chief Jimmy Walker said the blaze appeared to have started in the rear of the home, but a cause has not yet been determined. Crews used three small hand lines and one large hose to extinguish the fire, according to Walker. No injuries were reported and a dollar-loss amount has not yet been given.
Both of Alex's two children and Valerie's two children are spending time with family before returning to school on Monday.
A GoFundMe site has been created to help with the family's expenses recovering after the fire.
