A West Virginia father and four of his children died in a devastating house fire over the weekend, leaving the children’s mother and a surviving daughter with “absolutely nothing.”
Hunter Campbell, 28, died early Saturday in a fire at his Hardy County home along with four of his children, ages 1 to 5, according to the News & Observer.
First responders were alerted to the fire around 5 a.m. local time, the West Virginia state fire marshal said.
“[One] “The adult woman was able to escape the fire and was transported to a local medical center,” the statement added.
“The cause of the fire will be considered undetermined due to the severe amount of damage sustained to the structure. “No smoke alarms were found in the rubble,” the article explains.
Hunter Campbell, 28, and four of his children, ages 1 to 5, died in the blazer early Saturday morning. Candi Ann/Facebook
The bodies of the father and four children were sent to the West Virginia Medical Examiner’s Office for an autopsy, authorities said.
Campbell’s fiancée, Candi Strawderman, survived the fire, her friend said in a Facebook post.
In addition to Campbell, Strawderman is mourning the loss of her two stepchildren and the children she and Campbell shared, the friend explained.
Candi Strawderman (left) survived the fire. Hunter Campbell/Facebook
Strawderman and her daughter, who also survived the fire, now “have absolutely nothing.”
It is unclear if Strawderman’s surviving daughter was in the home at the time of the fire.
As of Tuesday afternoon, a GoFundMe for Strawderman and her daughter had raised more than $60,000 of its $65,000 goal.
A second fundraiser for the mother of Strawderman’s stepchildren also raised more than $16,000 of its $25,000 goal.
The main damage to the home where Campbell and the children died occurred in the living room area, where investigators found the remains of a heater, Deputy State Fire Marshal Jason Baltic told MetroNews on Monday.
The family’s home did not have working smoke detectors, authorities said. Hunter Campbell/Facebook
But officials cannot determine whether the heater started the fire due to the extent of the damage, Baltic told the outlet.
“Everything in that room is completely destroyed. There is nothing left in there, floors and everything, it is no longer there,” she lamented.
The main problem, Baltic stressed, was the lack of smoke alarms in the home.
“That’s a huge, huge way to prevent this from happening. There are countless lives that have been lost because there are no smoke detectors or smoke alarms,” she said.
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Source: vtt.edu.vn