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Family survives Thanksgiving blaze
  
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By ROBERT AVERY
On a day when Pasadenans were giving thanks for their blessings, another family was thankful they still had their lives after a raging fire destroyed their home.
The Thanksgiving Day blaze at 513 W. Pitts St. broke out around 4:15 p.m. and in a matter of minutes the house was ablaze with flames consuming much of the house.
Four Pasadena Fire Department trucks responded and crews quickly knocked down the huge flames that were visible on the outside of the old one-story home, before attacking the interior, looking for hot spots and flare-ups.
But amid all the tears and heartache of a family traumatized by the fire, the tragedy could have been far worse.
Five children, ranging from ages 12 to 18, all were able to escape the house as were the adults. Two puppies, Sammy and Demon, also were saved.
“That’s all I was able to grab,” a tearful Jacquelina Olvera said.
The family was just getting ready to sit down for their Thanksgiving meal when the fire broke out. The day after the fire, amid the blackened ruins of their small kitchen, the turkey could still be seen sitting in a pot on top of what had been the stove.
The fire department suspects something happened with a power surge box connected to an electrical outlet. That confirms what family members described. They saw flames coming from the power surge box attached to an electrical outlet in the oldest child’s bedroom and racing up the wall. A vacuum cleaner cord was connected to the surge box at the time of the fire.
The family said once the flames caught nearby bed sheets on fire, the room was fully engulfed in seconds.
As a last-ditch effort, Olvera’s husband ran outside, grabbed a garden hose, yanked an air-conditioning window unit from the house and tried to extinguish the flames that way.
“We tried to put it out ourselves. It just accelerated,” said Michelle Martinez.
Martinez, recovering from Lasik laser eye surgery, said she collapsed to the living room floor because the smoke was irritating her eyes so badly, before being pulled away from the inferno.
“We bought the house 17 years ago. We worked our whole … lives to pay for it and it’s gone in a minute,” Olvera said.
Also destroyed in the blaze was a wheelchair that Olvera needed from time to time to cope with a heart ailment.
What the family was able to salvage was loaded onto the flatbed of their F-150 Ford pickup that somehow made it through the fire despite being parked close to the house. But it too bore signs of the intense heat. The plastic plate covering the left brake light melted and the paint along the left side bubbled.
Compounding the hurt was the fact that a new roof in recent years had been installed and they were in the process of finishing repairs caused by Hurricane Ike damage.
But for one family, Thanksgiving 2008 was a day they gave extra special thanks that all of their loved ones survived a devastating fire.
The Thanksgiving Day blaze at 513 W. Pitts St. broke out around 4:15 p.m. and in a matter of minutes the house was ablaze with flames consuming much of the house.
Four Pasadena Fire Department trucks responded and crews quickly knocked down the huge flames that were visible on the outside of the old one-story home, before attacking the interior, looking for hot spots and flare-ups.
But amid all the tears and heartache of a family traumatized by the fire, the tragedy could have been far worse.
Five children, ranging from ages 12 to 18, all were able to escape the house as were the adults. Two puppies, Sammy and Demon, also were saved.
“That’s all I was able to grab,” a tearful Jacquelina Olvera said.
The family was just getting ready to sit down for their Thanksgiving meal when the fire broke out. The day after the fire, amid the blackened ruins of their small kitchen, the turkey could still be seen sitting in a pot on top of what had been the stove.
The fire department suspects something happened with a power surge box connected to an electrical outlet. That confirms what family members described. They saw flames coming from the power surge box attached to an electrical outlet in the oldest child’s bedroom and racing up the wall. A vacuum cleaner cord was connected to the surge box at the time of the fire.
The family said once the flames caught nearby bed sheets on fire, the room was fully engulfed in seconds.
As a last-ditch effort, Olvera’s husband ran outside, grabbed a garden hose, yanked an air-conditioning window unit from the house and tried to extinguish the flames that way.
“We tried to put it out ourselves. It just accelerated,” said Michelle Martinez.
Martinez, recovering from Lasik laser eye surgery, said she collapsed to the living room floor because the smoke was irritating her eyes so badly, before being pulled away from the inferno.
“We bought the house 17 years ago. We worked our whole … lives to pay for it and it’s gone in a minute,” Olvera said.
Also destroyed in the blaze was a wheelchair that Olvera needed from time to time to cope with a heart ailment.
What the family was able to salvage was loaded onto the flatbed of their F-150 Ford pickup that somehow made it through the fire despite being parked close to the house. But it too bore signs of the intense heat. The plastic plate covering the left brake light melted and the paint along the left side bubbled.
Compounding the hurt was the fact that a new roof in recent years had been installed and they were in the process of finishing repairs caused by Hurricane Ike damage.
But for one family, Thanksgiving 2008 was a day they gave extra special thanks that all of their loved ones survived a devastating fire.
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