Father, Son Awake to Fire That Swiftly Makes Them Homeless

Brent Forsyth bade the 1980s a bitter farewell on Saturday as he sat on the edge of a water-soaked sofa that was surrounded by a heap of charred mementos.

“What a way to end the decade,” Forsyth, 21, said dejectedly as he surveyed his fire-ravaged house and took stock of what little was left of his belongings.

“This isn’t the way I wanted to start the New Year,” Forsyth said.

Forsyth and his father, James, 50, were left homeless after a raging fire swept through the four-bedroom home that they have owned since the end of 1979. The fire caused more than $190,000 in damage, fire officials said.

James and Brent Forsyth both escaped from the house unharmed before it was engulfed by the 3 a.m. fire, said Orange County Fire Department spokesman Peter De Paola III.

It took 28 firefighters about 40 minutes to douse the flames that gutted the single-story home in the 6000 block of Ohio Street, De Paola said.

By the time firefighters arrived, flames were leaping high above the shake rooftop, which collapsed within nine minutes. Luckily, there was no wind to push the flames to neighboring homes, De Paola said.

“It was quite warm from our house,” said Ed Webber, who lives across the street from the Forsyth home. “When I walked outside, the roof was fully involved in flames.”

De Paola said investigators have determined that the fire was caused by the lack of a spark arrester in the chimney flue. A spark from a fire that was left burning in the fireplace escaped from the chimney and set either the roof or the attic on fire, De Paola said.

“Considering the extent of the damage,” De Paola said, “it is very fortunate that there were no injuries.”

James Forsyth, still dressed in a pajama shirt Saturday afternoon, acknowledged that he went to bed while the “fireplace was still going.”

“I didn’t expect to be waking up and doing this today,” he added as he sorted through sooty clothing that was sitting in piles in his back yard.

Brent Forsyth said he was awakened just before 3 a.m. by a “crackling noise in the attic” and the faint smell of smoke. He jumped out of bed and ran into the kitchen, but was blocked by a wall of flames. Then he rushed to alert his father.

James Forsyth said he was startled awake by his son, and in a daze, ran out to the back yard to see what part of the house was in flames.

“It didn’t look too bad,” he said. “So we ran back in to grab whatever we could.

Brent “was running around yelling, ‘What should we grab? What should we grab?’ So I pointed and said, ‘Grab that!’ ” His son then grabbed a statue worth hundreds of dollars.

The pair had no time to grab anything else, however, before they were forced to flee from the thick smoke and heat into the back yard again.

Running to the front of the house, James Forsyth joined Webber in squirting down the front of the house with garden hoses until fire engines arrived.

“I still didn’t think it was big, until boom, the whole thing went up,” James Forsyth said. By the time crews arrived, the flames had ignited a towering evergreen tree in the front of the house.

After the fire, the Forsyths were able to salvage about half the family’s belongings. But Brent Forsyth said he lost everything he owned except a few T-shirts and a pair of skis.

“My room was toasted. It really got torched,” he said.

Sitting on the front steps of her house on Saturday afternoon, Joy Webber said she was impressed by the number of concerned neighbors who have come by to offer assistance to the father and son.

American Red Cross spokeswoman Sylvia Stewart said the emergency aid organization was providing food and shelter at a nearby motel for James and Brent Forsyth until Tuesday. In addition, the Red Cross is donating clothes.

“What’s really been great is to see how much people care,” Joy Webber said. “It makes you feel good.” She and her husband said they have known the Forsyth family since they moved into the neighborhood.

Sympathetic with the Forsyths’ plight, they had stayed up until morning, helping James and Brent pull their possessions out of the ashes.

“When you see your whole life going up in flames, it is awful,” Ed Webber said.