Family safe after house fire
The sun was rising Tuesday as Roberto Su gingerly made his way through the ankle-deep water in the charred living room of his home just outside Fort Lauderdale.
At his feetwere drenched remnants of furniture and possessions made sodden by the efforts of firefighters a few hours earlier.
Su was wearing the same T-shirt and shorts he had on when he, his pregnant wife and children— ages 2 and 9 — escaped a blaze at his home at 4901 SW 16th St. about1 a.m.
“It’s a total loss,” Su said. About 30 firefighters from Broward Sheriff Fire Rescue were at the scene and arrived to find “heavy smoke and flames to the back of the single-family home,” said Battalion Chief Michael Kane.
It took two hose lines to put out the fire that caused “considerable damage” to the home, Kane said.
The cause of the fire is still being investigated and Su, 40, has no idea what started it. “We just went to sleep and therewas nothing wrong. My wife woke up to the smoke inside the house,” he said.
Su, a manager for a building supply company, took his 5 1⁄2- months pregnant wife and their two children to her mother’s residence in Hialeah — a small efficiency. “It’s probably good for adayor two, butweneed to find a better situation.”
Su and his familyweren’t hurt in the fire but they have lost practically everything that was inside the house they’ve called home for about three years.
“It could have been worse,” Su said. “Right now we just need to figure out what the insurance does with this.”