#Texas family who lost smell due to COVID narrowly escapes fire

A Texas family battling coronavirus was able to safely escape a house fire — even though most of them were unable to smell the smoke, according to a report.

Bianca Rivera, 17, was the only one in the household who could smell something was wrong as flames engulfed the home Friday in Waco, news station KWTX reported.

“I started smelling burnt plastic, and that’s when I got more alert and ran outside of my room,” Rivera told the news station. “I couldn’t even pass the hallway because it was filled with so much smoke.”

Rivera had not come down with coronavirus, but her three other relatives were sick with it and had lost their sense of smell.

She alerted the others to the fire and then rushed them outside of the house, KWTX reported.

“I knew I had to wake everyone up,” she said. “I opened the back door and I got everyone out one by one.”

Rivera said at the time that she wasn’t thinking about whether she was “going to get hurt or I was going to get burned as long as I got them out safe and sound.”

“I just wanted to get everyone else safe and alive. That’s all I wanted… I don’t really count myself a hero,” she told KWTX.

The teen was able to get out the family and their four dogs but their home was destroyed in the fire, the outlet reported.

No cause for the fire has been released.

“This family is lucky to be alive. ⁦⁦@WacoTXFire would like to remind everyone to make sure you have working smoke alarms in your home,” the fire agency wrote on Twitter.