MIAMI GARDENS (CBS4) – Flames spewed and smoke belched from a fire that destroyed a townhouse Tuesday in a complex near Red Road and the Palmetto Expressway.

Angie Douglas sobbed as she looked at what was the home she shared with her husband and two children at Nortwest 55th Avenue and 169th Street.

“Everything was off. We were actually in the process of moving and I come home to this, everything destroyed,” Douglas said through her tears.

Fortunately no one was home. No one, that is but Beast, the family’s Rottweiler, whose gentle nature and doe eyes belie his ferocious moniker.

Beast, who was on the locked rear patio, managed to escape by scaling a six foot high fence. He was found wedged between it and a rear shed.

Investigators immediately called the blaze suspicious, because it started outside, on the patio. A flaming object may have been tossed onto the patio according to one firefighter who asked not to be named.

“We’ve had problems with a neighbor previously,” Douglas said. “At this point, it could be anything.”

The family, that had planned to move to a new home tomorrow, now faces the prospect of having to replace virtually all of its belongings.

“But nobody got hurt,” Angie Douglas said. “Thank God.”

Fire Lieutenant Arnold Piedrahita credited the fast actions of first responders and firewalls for saving the entire complex from destruction.