LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WDRB) -- Two people have been killed in a house fire that likely started with a lightning strike.
A granddaughter died trying to rescue her bed-ridden grandfather from their burning home. Investigators think lightning sparked the deadly fire, and heart-wrenching recordings show how hard family and firefighters worked to get everyone out alive.
The next day, the family came back to the home, still in shock. "All we heard was a big boom, next thing we know we smell something burning," said Joseph Crenshaw, who lived at the home.
Crenshaw lived there with eight other people. Six were home when the fire started -- only four made it out alive. They say 19-year-old English Moore ran upstairs to get her phone to call for help to save her 83-year-old grandfather, Wakley Hayden, who was bedridden.
"By the time she made it downstairs, she couldn't get out. She couldn't see, and she was just banging on the back door and she was screaming, 'Help me, help me,'" her sister, Italy Moore, explained.
Her family tried to get her out, but a storm door was stuck. "So we try to bust out the glass because she couldn't get the door open," Crenshaw remembered. "But it was tied shut." "As soon as I tried to go in the back door the smoke just hit me and I just immediately started coughing and wheezing," he said, of his attempt to help. "I ran and tried to flag down an ambulance, I told them where everyone was in the house, by the time they got in there and got them out, it was too late."
"My little sister was burnt from her neck down, all the way to her legs," said Moore.
Officials say the two died from smoke inhalation. The Red Cross is helping the family, but after a few nights, Italy Moore says she and her family will be homeless, just weeks before she has a baby girl. "It just seems like it's a dream, I don't want to believe that she's gone."
The family plans to set up a fund at Chase Bank.
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