Moving to a new town and starting over can be tough. Imagine doing all of that and just when you start to settle in, you wake up to find your home on fire. One family is going through that pain and need a little help picking up the pieces.
ReAnne Caruth tried not to get emotional as she sifted through her newborns charred clothing. Her family moved from Atlanta to Chickasaw in April now they’re forced to move again.
Caruth said, “We just got on our feet. just started off everything. had just gotten our car 2 weeks before we got the house and here we are.”
Caruth said a space heater, on fan mode, started the blaze in her 11-year-old daughter’s room.
“She woke up to her bed completely covered in flames and she ran to wake up her stepfather and the baby. It spread to the box spring so fast within just a couple of minutes so he decided to get them out of the house,” she said.
Caruth is hoping to find anything salvageable among the soot, but there’s not much that hasn’t been touched by the fire.
An emotional Caruth said, “Just thinking about it, it’s just heartbreaking to work so hard for things and just lose them to a fire, something that we can’t even control. that you couldn’t control.”
For now, Caruth’s family is living in a motel room wondering how they’ll rebuild their lives in an unfamiliar town.
“I’m not sure how will be able to get back to where we were. I mean we’re back at Ground Zero,” Caruth said.
Caruth hopes her family’s tragedy can be a lesson to others.
She said, “I would just like to bring awareness to how quickly space heaters can become unsafe. You really have to make sure that you follow the directions and you use them properly because it can only take a few minutes for tragedy to happen just by improperly using a space heater, using electronics or anything like that.”
