A fire destroyed a Fayetteville home over the weekend and made national news due to the fame of one of its occupants.
Farah Brown is the owner of the house on Mountain Laurel Way that burned Feb. 18. She is known professionally as Cocoa Brown, and comedian and actress with more than 60 television and film credits according to IMDb.
She lived in the home with her son Phoenix, according to a Feb. 19 post on her Instagram account which has more than 200,000 followers. The fire was also reported by celebrity news outlet TMZ.
A GoFundMe account was set up to help with the expenses incurred “as she and her son must rebuild their lives from scratch,” the IG post noted.
The official report from Fayette County Fire/EMS showed that an alarm was received at 3:04 p.m. and units arrived six minutes later. The blaze was controlled by 6:00 and the last unit cleared at 8:01. Nearly 20 personnel were on site working the fire, for which the Fayetteville Fire Department provided assistance.
The report indicated that units arrived to find a fully involved attic in the structure, and that crews found rapidly deteriorating conditions which led to all personnel being pulled from the structure.
The smoke and heat detector in the house was operational but failed to alert the occupants, the report stated.
According to the TMZ report, which cited “sources with direct knowledge,” Brown believes a lit candle may have fallen into some clothes in the house. “By the time the fire alarm went off … CB ran into the room, but it was quickly becoming an inferno,” it stated.
“We’re told Cocoa tried her best to put out the fire with an extinguisher she had on hand — but the fire started overtaking the whole house and she had to escape while she could,” TMZ reported.
As of 2 p.m. Feb. 20, the GoFundMe account had raised $48,408 of its $50,000 goal.
