iStock/Thinkstock(MADISONVILLE, Texas) — A 911 dispatcher in Madisonville, Texas, is being praised for staying calm when her own teenage daughter called to report their house was on fire.
“911. What’s your emergency?” dispatcher Layla Wray can be heard answering at around 12:20 a.m. on Jan 7 in audio of the call.
“Mommy. Mommy. It’s Cassidy. The house is on fire,” her 14-year-old daughter replies.
Wray, who has been working as a dispatcher for about a year and a half, was the sole dispatcher the night of her daughter’s call.
“Mommy. It’s going to burn us all,” Cassidy continues in the audio, fighting back tears.
“All right. All right. Calm down. Calm down. I’ve already got somebody en route. OK? It’s OK,” a composed Wray responds.
Wray’s husband, son and dogs were also at home when the fire started on the back porch.
“This 911 call comes in and it was her own daughter,” Madison County Sheriff Travis Neeley told ABC News. “She gives her instructions and stays cool, calm and collected to get everybody out and told her everybody was on the way. She handled it very well. Most people in this situation would probably be — once they realized it was their house and their daughter — normal people would lose their mind.”
Neeley said it was very cold that night, “down to 17 or 18 degrees,” adding that “the wind was pretty strong, so it didn’t take long for the whole house to get engulfed.”
The house was completely destroyed but Wray never panicked. She just told her daughter to make sure the rest of the family was safe, and at one point, to stop bickering with her brother.
“You would not believe the outpouring of donations and contributions coming in,” Neeley said of his community rallying behind the Wray family. “Clothes, shoes and money contributions pouring in. They pretty much have to start over with everything.”
The family is now staying in a hotel for the time being.
“We have a local citizen that paid for the hotel through the 15th of January while they get organized and try to make some long-term living arrangements,” said Neeley. “The poor thing works two jobs trying make ends meet. They pretty much got stripped of everything but their life. But they’re the kind of people with good spirits and good faith. They may not have anything, but they have their life.”
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