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The Journal of Lacy D Phillips

Never Run Into a Burning Building
05/09/2005 07:21 a.m.
Our neighbor died in a house fire today. It was really, really suspicious and really, really terrible.

The short version is that we saw smoke. I called 911 and several of us neighbors tried to go in after the woman, but she ended up dying.

The long version is as follows:

I went up to Grandpa's after church and borrowed his tiller so I could finally get my hedgerow planted. Grandma and Grandpa were out to Mother's Day dinner, so I just went around back and got the tiller out of the shed and carried it down the hill to my house. It's just a little weeder tiller, so it wasn't too heavy to carry four doors down. On my way down the hill I saw one of our neighbors who I hadn't seen in awhile named Theresa going in her back door. She was wearing a bright tuqoise blue t-shirt and jeans. I thought about waving or something, but my hands were kinda full and she was never really sociable anyway. As I walked past her house, though, I remember noticing that when the electric company people came out and cut all of the trees back from the power lines, they chopped the whole top off of an oak tree that my friend David planted back in the day when he used to live there. I thought about bringing my sister's digital camera up and taking a picture of it to e-mail him later. This was about 3:30 or 4.

So later on in the afternoon I was out in the front yard tilling and Grandpa and Grandma stopped by to check on their tiller and then went on up the hill. And then Mom brought my dog home and we we sat on the front porch talking for awhile. I went back out to the yard to finish my tilling when Mom and Kempo started to leave. They had to stop up at Grandma and Grandpa's house before they left town, so they drove past me on their way up the hill.

Then I heard Mom honking the horn and yelling that "the house is on fire" and I looked up the road thinking it was Grandma's house, but it was white smoke coming out of the house behind the Community Center where the Phelpses used to live. So I turned the tiller off and ran in and got the phone and called 911 and ran up there while I was talking to the dispatcher. By the time I got off the phone, Kempo and our neighbor Joyce were trying to open the front door to see if anyone was in there, but it was locked and really hot. I yelled at them that I saw Big Theresa come home, but that I didn't see her car in the driveway. So I went around back because I heard their house dog at the back door trying to get out. I looked in the garage for a car on my way around back and yelled at everyone that the Mustang was parked in there so someone might be home and that we should try to get the dogs out. Kempo got the sliding glass door open and kicked out the screen so the dogs could get out and that's when we heard someone moaning inside.

Kempo yelled at everyone that he thought he heard a woman was inside. He made several attempts to go in after her, but it was too smokey. So I went in a couple of steps and grabbed a blanket off of the couch and drug it out. I thought that I could put the blanket over my head and crawl in after whoever was calling for help. I remember that house pretty well from when I used to practically live with the Phelpses and the noises sounded like they were coming from either the kitchen or one of the front bedrooms. I remember thinking that even if I could go in and get all the way to the front of the house and find the source of the moaning, I probably wouldn't be able to get Theresa out if it was her because she's really obese.

At that point the smoke was a good two feet from the floor and the fire was only in the front of the house, so I made a half-hearted attempt at putting the blanket over my head and crawling into the smoke, but I only got about two paces in before it got too hot. The woman sounded like she was too far from the back door for anyone to risk going in after her that way, so I ran around to the front of the house where Joyce had busted out the bedroom window. Grandpa brought his garden hose from his house and hooked it up. Joyce sprayed it in the busted out window towards where we heard the sounds, but the person wasn't making any sense or saying anything intelligible. It was just moaning and we hoped it might be one of their house dogs burning or something because it was barely human sounding. But at times it sounded like "help help". We just kept yelling in the windows for whoever was in there to get down on the ground and crawl towards our voices.

We were hoping that whoever it was could get out on their own, but the moaning had stopped by the time the volunteer fire truck pulled up. Stephen Harrell, a kid I went to high school with, was the first firefighter on the scene in his pickup truck and civilian clothes. All of us neighbors who were gathered around the house yelled at him that someone was in the house but we couldn't get to her. Joyce told me to get something to bust the front door in with, and I got a heavy metal deck chair off of the back porch and threw it over the fence. But Stephen told us not to bust out any more windows because the additional oxygen would feed the fire and make it spread faster. I kept expecting him to try to go into the house. It hadn't been too long since the moans had stopped and I was just praying that Stephen could go in and bring the person out and that it wouldn't be too late. But the fire was already spreading really, really fast. At first it was just the front bedroom, but then the second floor caught and there were flames coming out of the air conditioner in the kitchen, which was near where I thought the moans were coming from. We heard several pops or small explosions from the front of the house and Stephen told everyone to get away from the house, but we pretty much ignored him. Joyce kept spraying the water into the window and Kempo stayed at the back door yelling that help was on the way. Stephen radioed in from his truck for the EMTs, but he couldn't go into the house because he didn't have an oxygen tank or any of his gear. So we all just had to wait. We kept yelling into the house and listening for an answer, but I think we were all afraid that it was already too late.

I couldn't do anything but just pray and pray that it was a dog in the house and not a person. I went back around to the back door and we kept yelling in the open door that help was coming and to get down on the ground and move toward our voices, but there were no sounds now. An ambulance was the second thing to get there, but of course they wouldn't be able to go in either. When the fire trucks finally got there it took them forever for everyone to get into their safety gear and get all of the hoses and equipment set up. We told them that we had heard a female voice in the front of the house and they asked us how many people lived there. While they were still setting up, I had time to run up to Granpa's house and get his camera. When I got back to the scene, a fireman who I had just seen in church recognized me and came over and gave me a hug and told me to tell everyone to get back. Then they made us all go across the street while they got the main part of the flames beat back enough for the guys with the masks and stuff to go in. I took a few pictures of the guys hosing the flames.

When most of the flames were out, five guys in masks got the Infrared camera and lined up by the front entrance. The guy in front went in a little ways with the camera, backed out and signalled to the guys behind him and they all rushed in and came back out with a body. Four guys were carrying her, one on each arm and leg, and they took her out in the front yard a little ways and put her down. By the way they were all acting, we all knew she had to be dead. Her skin was all pink and puffy and her leg and arm were kind of black from being burnt. It occured to me that there would have been no way I could have drug that person out of a burning building by myself. It didn't look like the woman I had seen enter the house earlier in the day, even though this woman had a similar build. Whoever this was had shorts on and a dark shirt and not a turqoise t-shirt. The EMT just went over and checked for a pulse really quickly. He didn't rush or try to revive her or anything. His partner brought a gurney and they covered her with a sheet and left her in the yard for little bit while the firefighters got the fire under control a little more. Mom was hysterical. They loaded the body onto the gurney and took her around back to the ambulance, which sat there for like three hours while they finally got the fire out and finished going through the house looking for more bodies.

Anna Phelps was on her way home from her mothers and she saw all the commotion. She basically freaked out to see her childhood home engulfed in flames. She called her mother and her mother called the homeowner, but couldn't get ahold of her, so she called the homeowner's son, Jason. (See how everybody knows everybody in these small towns?)

I gave my statement to a police officer ans was told to stick around to talk to the fire chief. Everyone from Crandall was out of their houses by this time. There were like fifty people standing around watching the investigation and waiting to see if they found any other bodies. I kept joking that I didn't know that many people lived in this small town and that I hadn't ever seen half of these people before.

WAVE 3 sent a camera out and they interviewed Joyce. It was on the 11 o'clock news later that night. I could have weazled my way in front of the camera, but I didn't care much for trying to get on TV.

All of the neighbors sat out on the streets till after dark and speculated about maybe it being a meth lab or a suicide or something, but nobody really knew who exactly was living in that house at the moment since so many people seemed to come and go from there. We all thought it was really strange that whoever was inside couldn't get out in time because it seemed like an able-bodied person should have noticed a fire in the middle of the day in the room right next to them. It seemed to me that, unless the person was somehow incapacitated, they should have been able to crawl out the front door or the back. Even before the firefighters got there, I thought it might have been a suicide attempt or something fishy going on. Because if a person is aware enough to call out for help, they should be aware enough to try to flee the fire, but the moans never got any closer to either of the exits.

One guy who knew the people told Mom later that one of the residents had just been put on Xanax and was notorious for overdosing and completely zonking out. Several of the previous resident had had drug problems in the past, and one busybody swears up and down that ambulances had been called to the house several times because of attempted suicides. I don't know anything about that, really. All I know is that their dogs are obnoxious and yap all the time. (We caught the two dogs that we got out of the house and put kept them out of harm's way, by the way.)

The police came over and asked me if I saw anyone leaving the house before I called in the fire, which made me even more suspicious. I told him that I hadn't and that I had been in the front yard all day and hadn't seen any strange cars go by or anything, but that I had seen Big Theresa at the house earlier in the day, even though I didn't remember noticing her leave.

The victim's daughter told Mom that they had caught the bed on fire earlier in the day before Theresa left, but that they thought they had it out when they left for a birthday party. Now I don't know how in hell two grown women could catch a bed on fire if they weren't doing something highly unusual.

I called our local newspaper and told them that I had pictures of the fire if they wanted them. I got two of the body being removed from the house, but I don't think they want to use those. I ran out of film before I could get the all-important-sheet-covered-body-in-the-front-yard-while-the-firefighters-work-on-putting-out-the-blaze shot.

Anyway, it's been a terribly exciting day. By the time they had the body out and everything, I was walking around talking to all of the neighbors and I kept making jokes and stuff. I have NO IDEA why. It was so inappropriate. When the police officer asked me to make my statement I joked that it took me a long time to call 911 because I had to look up the number. Totally NOT funny. I guess I was responding to stress in some bizare way or something.
I am currently Thunderstruck
I am listening to Rufus Wainwright - Hallelujah

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