WHITE RIVER JUNCTION — The smell of smoke awoke a napping father who climbed out his bedroom window when he encountered a smoke-filled hallway at a Crystal Place home on Thursday evening.

After escaping himself, the father then rapped on his son’s bedroom window to wake him up and get him to climb out too. A neighbor subsequently called 911 as the occupants had left their phones inside the home.

Firefighters arrived at about at 4:16 p.m. to extinguish a fire in the basement of a three-bedroom, one-bath house located behind heating fuel distributor Cota & Cota and former APA Transport depot near the intersection of Route 5 and Maple Street in White River Junction.

Thursday’s fire illustrates the importance of having working fire detectors inside a home, Scott Cooney, Hartford fire chief, said on Friday.

“There were smoke detectors present,” but he added, “I don’t believe they were working at the time.”

He emphasized that early notification allows people to escape a building before it “gets into heavy fire conditions.”

“Smoke detectors can go off with very little smoke, so you can get up and get out of there and call 911,” he said.

The White River Junction fire was the second fire to which Hartford firefighters responded on Thursday. Earlier in the day they aided the Sharon Fire Department in responding to a fully engulfed house fire on Route 14 near the Sharon/Hartford town line in which the body of an adult male was recovered.

At Crystal Place, father and son evacuated safely, and the mother and another son, were not home at the time of the Thursday one-alarm fire, Cooney said. The family is currently being accommodated at a hotel in Hartford by the Red Cross, he said.

Firefighters also rescued an 18-year-old Pit Bull mix named Buddy from inside the house and “reunited him with the family,” he said.

The fire originated under the basement stairs and a preliminary investigation indicates it was “caused accidently by discarded smoking materials,” according to Cooney.

Most of the fire damage was confined to the basement although the above ground living space suffered “water damage.”

Cooney said he expected the residence can be reoccupied following repairs.

On Thursday, no exterior damage to the house was visible, the only sign that something had occurred inside the house a lone yellow police tape posted at a diagonal on the front door.

Contact John Lippman at jlippman@vnews.com.