Hillsboro-area mother Brandy Armstrong was in a thankful frame of mind Thursday morning (May 23), eight days after a fire destroyed her home, her family’s belongings and three vehicles that had been parked in a detached garage.
“It’s a horrible situation,” Armstrong said. But, she added, many people have come forward to meet the family’s needs.
“I left my house with nothing, but I feel more blessed than ever,” Armstrong said.
Fire destroyed the large home and detached garage at 5525 Lake Tishomingo Road early May 15.
Armstrong, 35, and her five children were home when the fire broke out and all six got out OK. Armstrong’s husband, Scott, 44, was out of town at the time. The family’s three dogs, cat and rabbit also survived.
One of the dogs ran out of the house with the family, and firefighters rescued the rest of the pets after they began extinguishing the fire, Brandy Armstrong said.
The fire was caused by an electrical problem with an outlet in a breezeway between the home and garage, Goldman Fire Chief Curtis Peters said.
When Armstrong’s alarm company contacted the family about the fire, Brandy said she didn’t see or smell any smoke and thought it was a mistake.
“I said, ‘There’s no fire.’”
But, she looked around the house and from her laundry room, spotted the blaze in the breezeway. After the fire got into the attic above the breezeway, it spread to the house and garage, Brandy said.
She said the alarm system helped save the family’s lives.
“Six years ago, when we installed a burglar alarm, the (alarm company rep) urged us to put a fire alarm in the attic (above the breezeway),” she said. “If it had not been for that, I don’t know if we would have gotten out. As soon as we got outside, the fire really went off.”
Armstrong said God was looking over the family, which includes children James, 16; Shawn, 14; Lindsay, 7; Brady, 5; and Maycie, 3.
Luckily, Armstrong said, the three youngest children had fallen asleep in front of the TV on a couch in the home’s main living area, after a long day playing outside.
Armstrong said she was too tired to carry them to their rooms and left them there, which turned out to be a blessing because otherwise, the children would have been in “four different corners in the house.”
Instead, when it was time to get all the kids out of the house, it was easy “to scoop them up” and leave, she said.
“It’s a miracle,” she added. “God’s our protector; without him, I don’t know what would have happened.”
The older children were waked by the commotion and ran out with their mom and siblings.
Armstrong’s alarm company also contacted Goldman Fire Protection District about the fire, Peters said.
The fire district was dispatched to the fire at 12:24 a.m., and firefighters arrived on the scene at 12:37 a.m., he said.
Peters said it took about three hours to put out the fire since the home and garage were so large.
Armstrong said the firefighters “were wonderful,” but she wishes the community would provide better financial support to the district, so it could staff both its houses with firefighters around the clock.
The district has two houses, but House 2, which is closest to Lake Tishomingo, is a volunteer house, which means it is not staffed with paid firefighters, Peters said.
“We live in a (partly) volunteer district, so we don’t have a staffed firehouse, which means the response time is going to be so much longer,” Armstrong said. “I’m not knocking them (Goldman firefighters). It’s not their fault. They did what they could, but I knew it (the Armstrong house) was a goner before water ever hit it. People don’t think about that, and whenever tax increases come around and people don’t want to vote for it, I wish they could call me. I never thought it (a fire) would happen to me, but it did.”
Armstrong said she and her children left the house wearing pajamas or sweatpants and no shoes.
“I had no purse, and all the cars were gone,” she said. “It thought, ‘What am I going to do?’”
The Armstrong family is staying in a hotel in Arnold, near where Brandy’s sister, Heather Suedmeyer, lives.
“She’s being an angel and doing laundry and everything,” Armstrong said. “It’s not just our lives that are disrupted, it’s our families and friends, too.”
Thankfully, the community has provided the family with a lot of help, collecting clothes and other items for them, Armstrong said.
“I’ve been saying now we might own more clothes than we had before,” she said.
The Red Cross assisted the family during and right after the fire, and since then their church, First Baptist Church of Cedar Hill, as well as other local churches and groups have pitched in to provide help.
The Hillsboro School District, where the kids attend school, has held collections, and a Hillsboro football association the family is involved with has helped, Armstrong said.
“We’ve even had a storage locker donated to us,” she said. “It (the community support) has been wonderful, but it’s God. God put that in people, to be so loving and generous.
Armstrong said the family plans to rebuild the house.
Since the fire, Armstrong said she has been back to the house trying to salvage old photos and other mementos.
“A lot of memories went down with the house,” she said.
Brandy said she was able to save her Bible, which was lying on a desk in her office near the front of the house.
“Everything on my desk was torched; they were totally black, except my Bible, which was still purple. You can’t torch the word of God.”
Several fire districts assisted with the call, including Cedar Hill, High Ridge, Hillsboro, Antonia, Mapaville and Dunklin, Peters said.