A family of seven was displaced after their home burned in the middle of the night on Wednesday, January 3.
Daniel Barrera, his wife, and his five children were asleep in the Lafayette house when the fire broke out. They were awakened by the shouts of one of the teenage children, who had stirred and noticed that something was wrong.
“My second sister, she’s fifteen, she was sleeping, and it was around 11:45 at night,” said Karina Barrera, 17. “And she just woke up and started yelling ‘mom, mom!’ And then I got up and tried to turn the light on from the room but it wouldn’t come on because there was no electricity. That’s when she went downstairs with my little youngest baby brother. And then we went upstairs for my other sister and my other brother.
“They all got in our daddy’s truck. And that’s when we seen the flames in the light bulb on top of the stove, there were flames coming out. And the minute we got out to my daddy’s truck, there was flames coming out of the window and they broke the window.”
Lafayette Fire Chief Keith Scruggs said that the family’s smoke detector did go off, as well. “So they got out, no one was injured,” Scruggs said. “We did get the fire under control—it took quite a while because we think it was an electrical or heating related fire; it got in the wall, and the attic. We did get it under control, but the home suffered heavy damage.”
The family went to spend the rest of the night at a relative’s house. They were renting to own the Days Road home, and are now urgently seeking another residence.
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There was another fire in Lafayette earlier in the same night. At 9:23 the fire department responded to a call to 5605 Carter Road, the site of an uninhabited rental trailer belonging to David Manion. “It was pretty much fully involved by the time we got there,” said Chief Scruggs. The trailer burned to the ground. Scruggs was unsure at the time of the interview whether it was insured.
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