FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. – The Fort Lauderdale home of an elderly woman went up in flames Sunday following a family cookout.
One woman rushed inside to save her 89-year-old mother from inside the home in the 100 block of Vermont Avenue.
“I heard a ‘pop’ and I came out to the garage, and when I looked, it was already on fire. So I ran back inside the house and got my mom. I said, ‘Come on, the house is on fire. Let’s go,’” Linda Hurst said.
Hurst told Local 10 News that she jumped into action to wake up her mother who was sleeping, moments before the room filled with dark smoke.
“I was just trying to get her out the house, and I got her out just in time,” Hurst said.
According to family members, just before the fire, they gathered ahead of Memorial Day for a cookout.
Hours later, nothing but a charred mess remained behind.
“She loved this house,” the homeowner’s daughter, Margaret Graham, said. “This is like a house where, you know, her kids come over on Saturdays and Sundays. We just hang out with her. But now, it’s not livable.”
Throughout the evening, family members comforted their matriarch as she sat with her walker.
“My grandmother made it out alive. That’s the best thing, you know,” the victim’s grandson, Jaylen Tillman, said.
“This is just devastating -- real heartbreaking and devastating,” Hurst said. “We have nothing. We have to start back over.”
All, however, was not lost as the victim’s grandkids recovered a photo of their grandfather that was spared from the flames and soot.
“Stuff is replaceable, but when you have people and you lose them – it’s not replaceable,” one relative said.
No injuries were reported.
While relatives believe a faulty air conditioning unit might have sparked the blaze, the official cause of the fire remains under investigation.