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11-year-old rescues pigs after fire breaks out on Caroline County farm

Posted at 6:45 PM, Dec 27, 2013
and last updated 2013-12-27 20:38:53-05

An 11-year-old boy in Caroline County is being hailed a hero after saving nearly 60 pigs from a fire in a barn.

Daniel Fitzgerald saw the barn fire while sitting inside his house on a hill nearly a mile away.

He knew six sows and more than 40 piglets were living in the barn.

"At that point, we had a full house so it couldn't have been any better for him to be here when he was," says Daniel's father Tony Fitzgerald.

Daniel jumped in a truck and drove over to the farm.

Some of the pigs were so spooked by the blaze that they would leave the gates as Daniel threw them open.

Three piglets didn't make it out of the fire, but it could have been much worse.

As for what led Daniel to run towards the fire...

"Courage. I just thought about the pigs and I knew I had to come down and get them out," he says.