A woman is being hailed as a hero for saving the lives of two pigs by calling 911 after she signed on to a livestream and saw that the barn that the animals were in was on fire.
Laura Palladino tuned into the livestream to see if Lucy and Ethel, a pair of pregnant pot-bellied pigs, had given birth yet. Much to her horror, she saw that the barn was on fire as soon as she signed on, and she immediately called 911 before calling the farmers to let them know what was going on.
Laura had visited the pigs at June Farms in upstate New York some weeks before, and she immediately bonded with them. In fact, she liked them so much that when she learned that the farmers had installed a webcam in their pigsty, she wanted to check up on them in the future.
CBS News reported that Laura was the only viewer of the livestream, and was therefore the only person who could save the pigs.
“I logged on and at first, I thought it was just, like, a wood-burning stove in the background,” Laura told WKBN. “When she realized it was a fire, she jumped into action, despite being 60 miles away, in a different county.
“I just called 911, but I’m in Dutchess County, so the 911 sent me to Dutchess County 911. And the operator, he was like, ‘What? You’re watching a YouTube video?” she added.
Laura was finally able to get through to Matt Baumgartner and farmhand Joshua Vics, who rushed to the scene and saved the animals from becoming bacon. They later discovered that the fire was started when Ethel clumsily knocked over a heat lamp.
“My mind immediately went to the worst. My heart dropped into my stomach,” Joshua said. “I don’t like to think about how bad it could have been if she (Palladino) didn’t say something.”
He added that the newly-installed webcam helped to save the pigs lives. The real hero here though, of course, is Laura, who still can’t believe what happened.
“I never thought that when we saw these pigs that I would technically end up saving their life,” Laura said.
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