Fire destroys mobile home in Hope Mills
HOPE MILLS, N.C. (WTVD) -- A Cumberland County family is left with nothing after a fire swept through their home.
It started with a piece of equipment designed to save a woman's life. Instead, it nearly took it.
"That's everything I have, everything I had," said Charmaine Bacon.
As family members dumped buckets of ashes from her Satisfaction Street mobile home, Bacon counted her blessings that a cousin and neighbor helped save her life.
"Cora, my cousin, came through the house and I did not even know it," said Bacon. "I was in the bathroom. She came in there. She could not speak -- just said 'You need to get out of the house. Get out of the house.'"
Disabled from a vehicle accident, Bacon has an electric wheelchair to get around, but had to hop on her one good leg down the front steps of her home.
"When I got on the porch, the neighbor had run over, and I hopped down the stairs as he pushed my wheelchair down to get me away from the house," said Bacon.
Firefighters said the home was gutted, and had a lot of smoke and water damage. The family said firefighters told them the blaze started around an outside electric lift which Bacon used to get her wheelchair from the ground up to the deck. Bacon said it was also supposed to be a fire escape if she needed it.
"I had had problems with it," said Bacon. "I kept calling the company, the people that installed it, to let them know it was shorting out, and no one has ever come out to fix it or look at it -- nothing."
The Red Cross is helping the family find some place to stay for a couple of days. The family is also setting up a rescue fund for donations.
