Woman Dies While Trying To Rescue Cat From Fire

PEWEE VALLEY, Ky. -- A Kentucky woman trying to save her cat from inside her burning home near Louisville has died.

Authorities said she died of smoke inhalation after being taken to a hospital.

Iris Kay Call and her husband had escaped from the house, but she went back inside looking for the cat and didn't reappear. Firefighters later removed her from the house.

Neighbor Sandy Bonds said that at about 12:30 a.m. Thursday, her neighbor knocked on her door, asking her to call 911 because his house was on fire. That's when the real panic set in because the man realized his wife had gone back inside.
"There was flames coming up the side and just thick smoke," Bonds said.

Bonds said Dennis Call and his wife, Iris, were able to escape their burning home, but when Dennis ran to the Bonds' house for help, Bonds said his wife ran back in to try to save the cat.

"He thought she was out, but when he got back she was gone again," said Bonds, who added that Dennis Call then began trying to fight the fire himself. "He was trying to spray the hose through the window and hollering for her. There was no answer, though."

That's when Bonds' husband, Morris Bonds, tried to go in to look for Iris, but he didn't get far.

"I got about 6 feet into the kitchen, and it was so smoky that I had to come back out," he said. "I couldn't breathe."

Morris Bonds added that the roof began to fall in, and that's when he realized their only option was to wait for firefighters to arrive.

"There's nothing you can do," he said. "It's just awful."

Added Sandy Bonds: "We were just helpless, waiting for help. I wish we could have gotten in."
When firefighters arrived, they had the fire out within minutes, and were able to find Iris alive on the second floor at the top of the stairs.

"I didn't think she was alive," Sandy Bonds said at the time. "Just looking at her, she was just limp."

Iris Call, 42, died later at University Hospital from smoke inhalation. Firefighters said it never should have happened.

"You should never reenter a burning building for an animal," Pewee Valley Fire Department spokesman Kevin Parker said. "There's never a reason for that, and we certainly don't want to have lessons like we had."

It's a lesson that the Bondses wish they never had to learn.

"You (ask yourself), 'What could I have done different to maybe change things?' but I don't think there was nothing that could be done," Sandy Bonds said.

The cause of the fire remains under investigation.

The cat she was trying to rescue also died in the blaze.