HOUSTON – Just as the holiday season is getting started, a Houston family now has no place to spend the holidays.
The Ogar’s lost their home in a fire just two days before Thanksgiving.
Flames engulfed their Alief home, destroying nearly everything inside. What survived is now covered in a thick, black layer of soot.
The family lived in the home for three decades, raising a family and eventually paying off the mortgage - a freeing feeling.
But they also dropped the insurance policy on the home, meaning there’s no help coming to assist them with rebuilding.
“We can’t rebuild,” said Carol Ogar. “Yeah, we don’t have the money to do that, so we’re just going to have to let it go.”
Carol has been spending her day sifting through the ashes with her son, Fidel.
“We are trying to go through this,” she said while sorting things into plastic bags. “We just trying to scavenge and see what we can find. You know what we can save.”
She recalls the day her home burned. She remembers that by the time the Houston Fire Department arrived, it was already too late. She also remembers standing outside watching a lifetime of memories burn in front of her own eyes.
“It was terrifying,” she said.
The fire that destroyed her home started, in of all places, the chimney, which typically funnels the smoke from the fireplace out of the home.
Carol says she started a fire to take the chill away.
“It was going for about an hour and a half. It looked so beautiful,” she recalls.
By the time she even noticed something was wrong, her neighbors were banging on the front door.
“He said, ‘Ma’am, you’ve got to get out of here.’”
Now her home is charred, the walls are hone and there’s no insurance. But what’s seemingly worse is this holiday, they’ll be apart from one another.
Carol Ogar: “I’m staying with one of my daughters.”
Fidel Ogar: “Yes. And I’m staying in a hotel room not too far from here, just proximity to work.”
All of this was avoidable, if only the Ogar’s would’ve had their chimney inspected.
“Have it inspected. Have it inspected,” said Ogar.
But there’s more to preventing a fire than just that.
“I’d say the first thing is to make sure that everything is open and operational,” said Captain Samantha Smith with the Community Volunteer Fire Department.
Cpt. Smith stopped by KPRC 2′s Gage Goulding’s house to see how his fireplace safety ranks.
“I’m going to call you out on it, but we definitely don’t want this right here when we’re about to start a fireplace,” Cpt. Smith said of a Christmas stocking hanging from the mantle. “I’m going to go ahead and move it out of our out of our way so we can be safe.”
She’s a stickler for safety, pointing out three big things to check off your list before starting a fire - whether gas or wood.
The first, keeping everything three feet away from the flames, like your Christmas tree.
“I’d say you’re kind of borderline, if I had to be honest, right,” said Cpt. Smith. “We always again say that three-foot rule is what we usually go off of. We don’t want to have the tree or anything necessarily that’s within three feet of a live fire source.”
There’s also making sure your fire stays inside the fireplace, using spark screens and keeping wood away is a good start.
“I would say the third biggest one is getting that checked, right? Getting the fireplace checked prior to utilizing it every season,” Smith said.
These sound like no-brainers, but it’s really easy to forget or let slip.
So before you light a fire, listen to the Ogar’s.
“People should definitely get the chimneys inspected,” Fidel said.
To support the Ogar family, you can visit their GoFundMe.
