MI House, Dog Saved by Couple Playing 'Pokemon Go'

A 10-year-old dog's life was saved Wednesday night in Royal Oak when a couple hunting Pokemon saw flames and called 911.

"They saved my house. They sure did," Randall Bishop, 40, said. "This whole Pokemon thing is obviously a positive, in our aspect."

Pokemon Go, an augmented-reality smartphone game, has drawn heat in some cities over trespassing and safety concerns. But at about 8 p.m. Monday, it led Patrick Awdish, 24, and his fiancee Katelyn Zack, 21, to Bishop's neighborhood at Cooper Avenue and Grandview Road.

"We kind of walked by a house, and we thought it was a bonfire," Awdish said, adding that they looked more closely and noticed it was on the house. "You could see the flames from the street."

They called 911, and firefighters quickly arrived and extinguished the fire with garden and fire hoses. Stanley, a flat-coated retriever, was alone inside the house. Royal Oak Fire Chief Jim Cook said the couple's quick thinking saved the house and the dog.

Awdish of Lake Orion and Zack of Macomb County had been in the area looking at wedding venues when they stopped for dinner at Yuzu Sushi Company. Awdish had recently downloaded Pokemon Go, and they decided to play the game, walking along the sidewalks.

"Had he not wanted to play it, we wouldn't have been walking around over there," Zack said.

The fire had started on a deck connected to the rear of the house. It had already burned about 25 square feet of the deck and melted the mesh on a sliding screen door, according to the incident report. A flower planter full of used cigarette butts, surrounded by wood chips, was under the corner of the deck where the fire started.

Cook said the fire's cause is under investigation, but "it certainly doesn't look like it was intentional."

Pokemon Go has become astonishingly popular in the past week, with an active user base comparable to Twitter and Snapchat. It uses GPS and maps to make it possible for people to walk toward animated images superimposed on the screen, advancing through the game.

Judy Davids, community engagement specialist, said there's a game feature near City Hall, and people walking "kind of like zombies" have been seen on their phones in the area.

"We've just been quietly watching," she said. "So far, knock on wood, police have had no incidents of anything weird on unusual happening. We just think it's really cool and want to give a shout-out to this couple, and encourage other players: If you see something that doesn't look right, call 911."

?Contact Robert Allen @rallenMI or [email protected].

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