A Gloucester family dodged a possible tragedy recently when they were alerted to an electrical fire in their garage by their smoke detectors.

Anthony Stately and his family were fast asleep in their Founders Mill home at 2:30 a.m. on Saturday, Jan. 8, when the smoke detectors started going off. The loud beeping of the detectors, located in every room and hallway in his house, quickly woke him, but he didn’t see or smell any smoke in the upstairs bedrooms, so he wondered if the devices were malfunctioning.

When he could find no smoke or fire downstairs, either, Stately opened the door to the attached garage, and discovered flames shooting up three feet high in the corner by the water tank. He raced back to his kitchen and grabbed the fire extinguisher and quickly put out the fire. By then, the garage was filled with smoke, and he raced back into the house to round up his family and get them downstairs in case the fire flared back up again. He then felt his way through the smoke-f...