Published: May 03, 2008 11:50 pm      

Mom, four kids left homeless after fire

A single mother and her four children lost their home Saturday when fire gutted their Raleigh County apartment.

Neighbors’ apartments in the complex were spared major damage.

Just after 3:15 p.m., firefighters from four departments were dispatched to Oakmont Greene Apartments in Bradley, according to Chief Bruce James of the Bradley-Prosperity Volunteer Fire Department. The fire apparently started on the back porch of the apartment and around an overstuffed chair.

The woman was upstairs and her children downstairs when the fire was reported, James said. The children saw the fire outside and screamed. They and neighbors in five other apartments in the building escaped safely.

No firefighters from the Bradley-Prosperity, Mount Hope, Beaver and Oak Hill departments were injured, either, James said.

Fire gutted the apartment, but fire damage was contained there, James said. Two or three other apartments sustained smoke damage, and some neighboring apartments had door and window damage from firefighters having to make forced entry.

The building was turned back over to the property manager who was to determine if the five other apartments were inhabitable.

While firefighters had determined the fire’s origin, they had not determined the cause, James said. The fire did not appear to be suspicious, but state fire marshals were called to investigate.

The family whose apartment was destroyed will receive help from the American Red Cross, James said.

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Latarsha Allen, also an Oakmont Greene resident, said her sister — a single mother of four children — lost her home.

Allen declined to reveal her sister’s name.

Allen said she was home when her niece ran to her apartment crying, telling Allen her family’s apartment was burning. Allen went out her back door and saw flames coming from her sister’s building.

“Hers is torched,” Allen said as she held a neighbor’s child. “We will do whatever it takes. She’s alone and left to fend for herself, and now she’s lost everything, basically.”

Allen said her biggest worry was not money, but making sure the children had clothes.

“This is my sister, my family. My heart is breaking,” she said with tears in her eyes. “She was having a hard time, anyway. ... This is just devastating. You just never think this would happen.”

Neighbors found themselves racing home when they heard the news. They expressed relief when they discovered their apartments were OK, but expressed sympathy for the mother whose home was destroyed.

Shane Smith and his fiancée, Jennifer Callison, live just two doors down from the apartment that burned. Smith said he was at Tamarack when his brother Daniel, also an Oakmont Greene resident, called and told him there was a fire at the complex.

“I thought it was ours when I first saw it,” Smith said.

As soon as he made it home, Smith ran into his apartment to get his dog and pet bird.

“I just wanted to get the bird and get my dog,” he said. “Everything else is replaceable.

“It scared the hell out of me. It really did. I feel bad for her, especially because she’s lost everything she had.”

Brittaney O’Dell said she was en route home Saturday and found herself behind fire engines. As she approached her home at Oakmont Greene, she saw smoke, then flames. Because she lives in a nearby building, she thought it could have been her apartment burning.

“‘Oh, my God. I left my curling iron on.’ That’s what I thought when I looked in this direction,” she said.

O’Dell said she often sees two of the four children whose home was lost playing near her apartment.

“Just to know about those two little kids — it’s heartbreaking,” she said. “I feel terrible for them.”

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