Family still in shock a week after devastating house fire

Parents and their five children are trying to pick up the pieces.

WEST PALM BEACH — Angie Davidson and a friend were driving back to West Palm Beach from Durham, N.C., the day after Valentine’s Day.

Davidson, 36, had just attended a court hearing on behalf of parents of her late best friend, trying to help them gain custody of their three grandchildren, who were now living with a stepmother. It hadn’t gone well. The judge had sided with the stepmother, against the grandparents.

Davidson was on Interstate 95, just shy of Georgia border, when her phone chimed. “Mom! The house is on fire!” Then the phone cut out. For the next 25 minutes, neither she nor her friend had cell service.

When she finally got through, Davidson learned her five children were safe. They’d been playing basketball in the yard when they saw the smoke.

A spark had sprung from wires in a back closet and that was all it took, Davidson said.

Midnight, the Chihuahua they had from birth — they’d delivered him — didn’t make it out of the house.

“He was barking and barking and he just wouldn’t come out,” Davidson’s kids told her.

An uncle tried to slow the fire with a garden hose but it was no use. Firefighters arrived to find the 60-year-old structure at 2713 Florida St. in flames.

By the time they were done, all the windows were smashed, the roof was left with a gaping hole, the interior was charred and the family’s belongings soaked. A living room TV set, on the mantle of a decorative fireplace, was melted beyond recognition.

A week later, the acrid smell of charred walls, rugs, appliances and plastic toys still hangs in the wrecked house. The floor tiles Davidson just installed are covered in soot. Forget about the new bed and new carpet. Family photos, lost. Wedding dress.

The concrete block house, what remains of it, sits on a triple lot near the end of Florida Street, in a blue-collar neighborhood just west of the Interstate and south of Palm Beach International Airport. A chicken scurries across the yard. The Davidsons have four of them and a steady supply of eggs. Their pig survived. And the cat and pet lizard.

Attic insulation floats in the air like snow, pushed by a breeze through the rafters and peeledback ceiling panels. Thick, yellow electrical cables run from a power box, through one side of the

BRUCE R. BENNETT / THE PALM BEACH POST Angie Davidson stands inside her home Wednesday in West Palm Beach. She’s been “overwhelmed with donations of clothes,” she said. Friends also started Gofundme efforts to raise money online. A local church held a car wash fundraiser for the family.

BRUCE R. BENNETT / THE PALM BEACH POST Mark Zembrowski, who makes crowd-quieting announcements on the 17th green of the Honda Classic, stands in the Ambassadors Club on Monday at PGA National.