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Alex Cabrero ReportingA fire in Midway could've been dangerous, even deadly, for the family that lives there, if not for an alert woman passing by.
"I just can't drive by and not do anything."
The fire left the Midway family with nothing. Early Friday morning the flames began burning in the garage and quickly spread to the rest of the house. Luckily, neighbors and a passerby made sure everyone got out.
The family was sleeping when the fire began.
Darla Simmons, Passerby: "So I just started yelling, you know, 'Your home's on fire. You gotta go.'"
Darla Simmons can't count how many times she's driven through Midway, but she'll never forget Friday.
Darla Simmons: "So I just stopped the car in the middle of the street and left it there."
She saw flames coming out of the house, and she knew it was up to her to alert the family.
Darla Simmons: "The glass was blowing out of the windows and everything."
Neighbor, Kelsey Porter, started helping, too.
Kelsey Porter, Neighbor: "I ran over and I just started pounding on the door. I kept on pounding on the door, ringing the doorbell."
Eventually, the family got out and firefighters arrived. Pictures taken by a neighbor show flames, a lot of smoke, and not much else.
Firefighter: "By the time we got here it was fully engulfed."
Firefighters did their best, but there really wasn't anything they could do to save the house.
Firefighter: "It was very tough to fight."
The house had piles and piles of sawdust between the walls of the house because of a former owner who worked with wood. That only led to the flames spreading faster.
Kelsey Porter: "We thought it would just hit the garage. But then, after that it was kind of going into the kitchen and the other parts of the house. It just started spreading all over."
The family is OK, and neighbors helped save a few items, but everything else is gone. Investigators have not determined the exact cause of the fire, but do say it started in the garage. Recently the woman who lived in the house had put a space heater in the garage because of problems with frozen pipes. Investigators are looking at that space heater as a possible cause.
