Their white dog came out of the house different, a black dog - but alive, somehow, after the house fire was out Thursday night. Firefighters called his name and Benji responded, coming to them from a far basement bedroom.

So everyone made it out, the dog, and earlier, the two teenagers who discovered the blaze. And the house, at 5617 Falconer Drive, which had severe smoke damage upstairs, was expected to be salvageable early Friday, said Cal Schafer, 42, who owns the home with his wife, LeEtta Schafer, 40.

Al Klein, fire chief of the Bismarck Rural Fire Department, said Friday he agreed that the house was probably salvageable at that point.

But a second fire in the house, discovered at about 3:45 a.m., finished the job, and LeEtta Schafer said Friday it's her understanding that nothing is salvageable now.

"There's pretty massive destruction here," John Elmstad, a state deputy fire marshal, said Friday.

Elmstad said he was at the scene after the Thursday fire and had an idea about where he was going to start looking for a possible cause, but then the second fire complicated things. He said a firefighter directed him to look at the electrical panel in the garage, which he did Friday morning, but Elmstad said he doesn't know if a problem he found in the electrical panel happened in the first fire, or if the second fire may have caused it.

Klein said most of the firefighters left at about midnight, leaving one unit behind to search for an additional hour for any hot spots. That unit of firefighters left at about 1 a.m.

"We were confident we had the fire out," he said.

He said the crew, called out to the fire at about 8:45 p.m., went through the entire house before leaving, and then Burleigh County Sheriff's Department deputies were going to monitor the scene and drive by when they could. Klein said. He said deputies had driven by the scene about an hour before the fire department was paged out again.

LeEtta Schafer said she, her husband and Kaden Schafer, 3, were at her husband's volleyball game at the Mandan Community Center when she got a call from their daughter, Kelsey Schafer, 14, who was screaming about a fire in the garage.

She told Kelsey to get out of the house, run to the neighbors and call 911.

LeEtta Schafer said her daughter had been home about 20 minutes when she went into the garage to get a pop from the refrigerator and at that point didn't notice anything wrong, no smell or smoke. But about 30 minutes later when she and her brother, Dylan Schafer, 13, were doing homework in the living room, they heard what sounded like a table saw in the garage. When Dylan Schafer opened a door to the garage to see what was going on, he saw smoke and flames, she said.

Neighbor Steve Madler said after the kids ran over to his house yelling their house was on fire, he grabbed his cell phone and dialed 911 on his way to the Schafers' house.

He said the main garage door was open about 2 feet, so he could see in and saw flames in front of a vehicle. He then went to the front door, stepped in and was almost overtaken by smoke. He went out and yelled at the kids, who were in his yard, asking if their parents were still in there. They told him no, but the dog was. He said he went back up the steps and opened the front door, but that's when deer-hunting ammunition in the garage started discharging and he immediately left.

LeEtta Schafer said after the first fire was extinguished, the family asked the firefighters if they could try to find the dog, "even if he was dead,"she said.

"He's one of us,"she said about the 9-year-old poodle-mix, which they raised from a pup.

She said the firefighters went in, called his name, and he came to them from a basement bedroom, uninjured but possibly in shock for a while, she said.

When the firefighters came out with him, the family, neighbors, "everyone started cheering," she said.

Cal Schafer, owner of Cal's Flooring, had all of his work tools in his work van in the garage, which was destroyed, LeEtta Schafer said.

Also destroyed was all of his work in the house, which the Schafers had built and moved into about two years ago and planned to live in forever, if possible.

Cal Schafer, who does woodworking for a hobby, had made most of the interior woodwork. He had made an iron and oak main banister, all the cupboards, the entertainment centers and all of the family bedroom sets, except for his son's, a pending project.

LeEtta Schafer appeared to become more emotional after spotting her husband's burned banister, and found her sister, who held her for a while.

"But my kids are safe, that's the important thing," said LeEtta Schafer, a stay-at-home mom.

She said as far as immediate needs, the family spent the night with her in-laws and she said they have great family and friends to help them.

"We'll be OK," she said.

(Reach reporter Virginia Grantier at 250-8254 or at virginia.grantier@;bismarcktribune.com.)