A woman spending Christmas Eve with her fiancé’s family noticed a house fire fueled by an artificial Christmas tree and warned them, but failed to escape herself.
Destiny Abdrazack, 22, was pulled from the house fire caused by an electrical short on Sunday morning and later died at a nearby hospital.
“At 2 a.m. on Christmas morning, the Isom family lost everything in a house fire that started quickly and quickly spread. Fate is one of the most beautiful souls to cross our path,” says one GoFundMe page for Abdrazack’s family and funeral costs.
“She is no longer earthly, but she will always be with us.”
Abdrazack screamed that the residence in North Highlands, California, was on fire, waking up five other people, her fiancé’s father, Ernest Isom, said.
“She was the one who called fire, and that’s the sad part,” Isom said KCR 3. “She saved our lives.”
Isom, his wife and his son and two other adults survived the inferno.
A neighbor, Brandy Byers, said she and her husband saw the Isom family standing outside the house screaming for help.
“They yelled, ‘Destiny! Someone’s in! Someone’s in!” Byers told the TV station. “There (was) nothing any of us could do.”
Firefighters removed Abdrazack from the living room and she was rushed to a hospital in critical condition.
Isom said the family fell asleep without turning off the Christmas tree lights and the smoke alarms in the home were not working.
“Unfortunately they wanted to keep the lights on until the last minute and we all fell asleep and had a few seconds to get out,” he told KCRA 3. “It was fast, and it was that fast. I’m talking about minutes.’
Two of the family’s dogs were also killed and the house was destroyed.
The GoFundMe page had raised about $3,000 by Tuesday afternoon.
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