At a little after midnight, we heard an explosion at our house. When we went outside to look, our neighbor’s home, at 36 Slippery Rock Ct. in Sharpsburg, Georgia, was engulfed in flames. The fire trucks had already arrived, but had not yet begun putting the flames out. I spoke to my neighbors, William Rochester and his daughter Emily Phillips, who made it out safe with Emily’s daughter Karsyn.
Emily Phillips, the daughter of the homeowner and a resident heard something pop in the kitchen, and then smelled smoke. She was nearly asleep next to her four-year-old daughter Karsyn at the time. Emily recounted, “It’s amazing to see how God did it because my daughter, she was in my bed and she’s usually in her room and the fire started back there.”
Emily had spent the last few days with a friend and had just come home this evening. Homeowner William Rochester, 75, heard his daughter screaming for him and it woke him up. “I wouldn’t be here if she hadn’t come home tonight,” said her father. Emily’s quick-thinking saved her whole family.
As they were exiting the home, Emily was on the phone with 911 reporting the fire, which had already spread all across the attic. Firetrucks arrived in scant minutes, as the home is only three minutes from a firestation.
Emily and William drove their cars down the block to stay out of the way of firetrucks. They gradually gathered all of their four dogs, two of whom had been in the backyard, and got loose during the fire. They found one of their indoor cats safe after the fire, in the laundry room. As of this writing, their second cat, Lacie, is still missing.
Their home is a total loss, and with it went all of the family’s clothing and personal items. Emily, who works locally at a warehouse, even left her home without being fully clothed in her excellent effort to save her daughter, father and her two indoor dogs. They will be staying with Emily’s mom, who also lives locally.
What caused the fire? William thought it might have been the heat lamps they had at their doghouses in the back shorting out, but the family isn’t sure. There was a rainstorm in the evening, as well as a tornado warning later in the evening, but no reported lightning was seen or heard. The rain, as well as the efforts of the fire department, probably prevented spread of the fire to nearby homes and trees.
The Coweta County Fire Department sent trucks from more than four stations totaling at least 17 firefighters to go after the blaze, according to Battalion Chief Jay Lunstead. He described the situation like this at the end of the firefight, “Basically we arrived to a house and when we came up, the attic was completely engulfed in fire. We still were able to see inside the house. We had reports from the Sheriff’s Department that they made contact with the homeowners, that they were all out, that they had two dogs in the backyard.
“We started a defensive operation due to the amount of fire and where it was located. Once we got conversion from that, we were able to go what we call switch to an offensive strategy where we actually take the hand lines into the house and extinguish the fire. And now what we’re doing is just mopping up hotspots.”
The firefighters fought from a ladder truck with a high arcing stream of water and multiple hoses at all angles of the home. “When it’s in the attic like that, it’s always difficult. You got to find access. That’s why we put the ladder truck up in the air and hit it from the top to really try to get control over it,” said Chief Lunstead. He shared that the Fire Marshal would investigate the cause of the fire and try to give the family some answers on how they lost their home.
The family is still grateful that they all made it out alive. William Rochester concluded, “God was watching over us. Otherwise, we wouldn’t be here.”
Family has set up a GoFundMe page for the Rochester-Phillips family at this linklink.
