Published: September 11, 2008 03:03 pm      

Five flee early morning flames

Smoke detectors credited with saving lives

Whether one calls it a premonition, or an uneasy feeling, Rita Davis listened to the voice inside her and two weeks ago the Wal-Mart cashier paused as she ended her shift and before going home, purchased two smoke detectors.

That act may very well have saved her life and the lives of her boyfriend and three of her children, including three-year-old twins.

"I don't know what it was, but something told me to buy smoke detectors so I bought two and had my boyfriend put them up when I got home," Davis said outside the charred rubble of what used to be her home.

The smoke alarms activated around 3:30 a.m., waking the two adults, the twins and a seven-year-old son. Fire had already enveloped the front room where the twins had been sleeping.

"When I woke up the whole bedroom was lit up by the fire, and I remember seeing grey smoke covering the ceiling," Davis said. "I remember getting up and D (boyfriend Dale Knabe) yelling, 'Fire. Get out. Get out.'

"I ran into the living room where the twins were. They were standing in the middle of the room and I grabbed them and we got out. I honestly don't know how we got out. The next thing I remember was standing out here and all the popping and cracking sound from the fire."

Even though half of the front room was being consumed by the fast moving fire, neither Davis nor her children were injured.

Knabe was treated in the emergency room at Cumberland Medical Center after receiving a serious cut to his right leg when he tried to reenter the burning residence to retrieve car keys so the family vehicle could be moved. Heat from the fire melted lens covers on a van and car parked in the nearby driveway.

"It appears to be an electrical fire," Cumberland County Fire Chief Jeff Dodson said at the scene. "There is no reason to believe anything else at this point."

As dawn broke, Rita Davis was peering into the ashes for any signs of the keys to the only vehicle the family has for transportation. She was also looking for her wallet which contained what was left of her paycheck after having bought groceries.

"There's the twins' little fold-up chairs," she said, pointing toward blackened and twisted metal on what was once the front porch. "There's my computer chair."

She thought of children's birth certificates, medical records, family pictures and items passed down in the family.

"I've lost everything. I don't have a home," she finally said. "I'm too old to start over."

The fire department called for a representative of the Cumberland County Chapter of the American Red Cross to come to the scene to assist with emergency housing and other assistance.