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Gene Kennedy ReportingUnfortunately, Christmas and fire seem to go hand-in-hand.
A Salt Lake City family will be spending the holidays elsewhere after a fire in their apartment. In fact, that was one of two overnight fires.
Let's begin with the family that had to evacuate their apartment at 1700 West and 300 South. The damage to their apartment is visible from the outside of the building.
Around 8 o'clock Angela Oliveraz smelled smoke coming from her bedroom. In seconds, the bed went up in flames. Her husband was sleeping on it and managed to escape with only minor burns, but their Christmas went up in flames.
Angela Oliveraz, fire victim: "He jumped through an entire circle of flames. He felt himself burning and that's what woke him up."
Amazingly Oliveraz' husband escaped with minor injuries. But he, his wife, and their two kids are homeless this holiday. And the Christmas presents are gone too, they burned in the bedroom.
Angela Oliveraz, fire victim: "We're not thinking about Christmas. We're thinking about where we're gonna stay in a week."
Everyone in her apartment complex had to evacuate. There are 10 units in the complex. All of them evacuated but only one unit was damaged.
The Red Cross found the displaced family a place to stay.
Mrs. Oliveraz says the family moved into the apartment last month. They never heard the smoke alarms go off and thought they were working.
Angela says fire investigators told her faulty wiring in the bedroom caused the fire. Eyewitness News has put in several calls to fire investigators if that's true. We're waiting to hear back. We'll bring you the updated information as soon as we can get it.
But behind the tears is gratefulness that the family made it out OK, and that no one else in the building got hurt.
Investigators think a wall heater is to blame for a house fire in West Jordan. This one happened after midnight at roughly 7800 S. 1400 West.
Crews were remodeling one of the units in this five-plex.
Officials say they had done some painting and apparently turned the heater up to make the paint dry faster. They say the heater either malfunctioned, or was installed wrong and started the wall on fire. The fire spread up into the attic, and crews had to pull down the ceiling in order to put out the flames.
Batt. Chief Marc McEoreath / West Jordan Fire Dept.: "There was a fire in the attic. They were able to pull the ceiling down and extinguish the fire in about 15 minutes."
The fire left about 20-thousand dollars in damage. None of the firefighters were hurt.
