MIAMI GARDENS, FLA. (WSVN) - A family has been displaced after a fire broke out in their Miami Gardens home.
The fire broke out at a home in the area of Northwest 12th Avenue near 170th Terrace, shortly after 11 p.m., Wednesday.
Firefighters worked overnight to put out the fire. The homeowner said she was sleeping when she heard her son yelling out.
“Everything is gone; it’s ruined,” the homeowner, who did not give her name, said. “We have nothing left. If we were in a deep sleep, it could have been a lot worse, thank God.”
The homeowner said she and her family were lucky that her son was awake because there were no working smoke detectors inside the home.
“I was in the room sleeping, and my son yelled out something was on fire,” she said. “I jumped up and looked and seen the fire, and I immediately just ran out the door and ran to the neighbors to call 911.”
“Smoke was just coming out the ceiling,” one neighbor said. “They were banging. Banging loud on the door, and I jumped up out the bed ’cause I had gone to bed, and they said ‘Fire! Fire! House on fire!’ I’m saying, ‘What? House on fire?’ They said, ‘Call 911,’ so that’s what I did, and I called 911.”
The family was able to evacuate the home safely, including a 6-year-old child and a 5-month-old baby.
The homeowner said she knows how the blaze was sparked.
“Just a kid playing with a lighter, matches — one or the other, just a kid,” she said.
“We just thank God that everybody came out alive,” the neighbor said. “That’s what’s most important, you know. A house can be rebuilt, but lives can’t be replaced.”
Fire officials have deemed the house unsafe, and the American Red Cross is assisting the family following the fire.
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