CLEMENTS – Angel Mabry was fast asleep when a window in her sunroom burst at 4 a.m. Monday and woke her fiancé, Camilo Guerrero. He quickly rousted her.
The one-story house the couple was renting at 7978 Blue Springs Drive in western Limestone County was going up in flames.
“We had to run out,” Mabry said. “The ceiling was already engulfed.”
On the mad-dash out, Mabry left without the keys to her 1992 Dodge Dakota truck. Unable to move it, she could only watch as the fire consumed it, she said.
Eleven firefighters from Clements, Owens and Rogersville used between 7,000 and 8,000 gallons of water to douse the fire, said Steve Clark, assistant fire chief for Clements Volunteer Fire Department.
“It was fully involved when I got there, and I went in my personal vehicle,” Clark said. “The house had a tin roof on it and those are hard to put out. There was no way to save anything. We just tried to save the pets.”
Firefighters could not determine the cause of the fire, but it was not suspicious, Clark said.
Little remained of the home Wednesday.
“There are four walls standing – no ceiling, no roof, nothing,” Mabry said. “We were getting married in October, but my wedding dress, my bridesmaid dresses, everything is gone. The $600 in my purse to pay rent and the light bill – it all burned up.”
Jimmy Rice of Athens owns the home, and Mabry carried only liability insurance on her truck.
The Limestone County chapter of the American Red Cross was quick to help the couple Monday. The group paid for the couple’s two-night stay in the Comfort Inn and gave them a $100 voucher for clothes and $95 for food.
“Now, we don’t have nowhere to go,” Mabry said. Although her father lives in the area, Mabry said he doesn’t have room for them in his one-bedroom mobile home.
“I don’t really want to ask for anything, but we don’t have anything, “ she said. “If someone could give us a couple more nights (at a hotel) maybe. I don’t know what to ask for. I’ve never been in this situation. We don’t know what else to do.”
Mabry, who cares for an Alzheimer disease patient and Guerrero, who works for C&C; Welding, did receive two free telephones from Cingular and can be reached at (256) 278-8668.
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