Missouri fire kills five; unattended fireplace blamed
His neighbor’s frantic voice startled Larrie Fitzwater out of a deep slumber before dawn Friday.
He opened the door and found Judy Silkwood standing in her bathrobe and slippers. Her house was on fire, she said, and the kids were trapped in the basement.
The horror hit him. Fitzwater called 911, grabbed his keys and put Silkwood in his pickup. The great-grandmother had walked the quarter of a mile in single-digit temperatures to get help — help that would come too late for the five people still trapped inside her house in rural Braymer, Mo.
After they reached the home, Fitzwater felt sheer hopelessness. Smoke from the finished basement kept driving them back. When he finally made it downstairs, Fitzwater saw that a couch and what appeared to be a mantel above the fireplace were on fire.
He ran back to his truck, grabbed a feed bucket and filled it with snow.
“I threw snow on the divan and on the mantel,” Fitzwater said. “I got the fire out.”
Blinded by heavy smoke, he sped back to his house for a flashlight. When he returned, Silkwood called out. She had made her way through the two basement bedrooms and hadn’t found her grandson, granddaughter, great-grandchild or two others staying with them.
When Fitzwater opened the bathroom door, his flashlight illuminated five bodies.
“Everyone was in the bathroom,” he said. “I don’t know why they would go in there unless a light was on. We’ll never know why.”
He saw an infant underneath a woman’s body.
“It was smoky and my flashlight isn’t very good,” Fitzwater said. “I thought it was a doll. She kind of had it tucked under her.
“I didn’t linger in there much. There was nothing in there that I could do.”
As Fitzwater stepped out of the house, he saw a fire truck sitting about a half-mile away at an intersection.
“There wasn’t … fire to see, so they were having a hard time finding it,” he said. “So I waved the flashlight.”
When emergency crews arrived, they found the bodies of Silkwood’s grandchildren, Stony Mack Russell, 11, and Lacey Stephens, who turned 23 on Friday; Stephens’ boyfriend, James Aaron Ford, 24; their daughter, Kenzi Ford, 4 months; and Stony’s friend Daniel Cosgrove, 11. The victims all lived in the Braymer area.
http://www.kansascity.com/news/breaking_news/story/1660015.html
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