MOUNT HOLLY, N.C. -- An improperly discarded cigarette prompted a series of events that ended up destroying a Mount Holly apartment building.
Fire investigators say the cigarette caught a blanket on a couch on fire. Then, that blanket caught an elderly man's oxygen tank tubing on fire. That oxygen tank acted like a blow torch and spread the fire quickly.
"We heard a big, big, big sound," said fire victim Tonya Watkins, who lived above the apartment that caught on fire.
Suddenly, Watkins, her baby and cousins were running for their lives.
"We looked out and we saw flames and we all just took off running down the steps and the next thing we know the whole building is gone," she said.
"They were as high as the top of the trees," said witness Amy Funk, talking about the flames shooting out of the roof.
The fire started in a first floor apartment below Watkins.'
"It went straight from the bottom, straight to my apartment on the top and then it was gone," Watkins said.
Firefighters say lack of a firewall in the attic due to older construction helped the fire spread quickly.
"We saw the awning fall and the roof cave in," Funk said. "It didn't take five minutes for half the building to go up in flames."
Firefighters say the building is a total loss and so are most people's possessions.
"I was in bed and heard a lady screaming," said witness Bobbi Anderson.
Anderson says it was a scream fellow parents understand. It wasn't about the fire. Turns out the screams came from a woman looking for her son, O'Neil Johnson. He was OK, thanks to Charles Thrift.
"I actually grabbed him and ran him to his momma," Thrift said.
Johnson and his mother were victims of Hurricane Katrina. They moved to Mount Holly for a better life. With this fire they survived again and lost again.
"(We lost) everything. Clothes, my computer, games, everything," Johnson said.
The Kendrick Square Apartments were built in the 1970s and do not have sprinklers. Investigators say if it had sprinklers, the fire would have been contained to the elderly man's living room.
