Fire Ravages Family’s House, but It Can’t Ruin Their Holiday

Helen Murray flapped her arms and smiled broadly standing in front of her fire-ravaged home in Cypress on Saturday afternoon, a cheery counterpoint to the disaster that hit at noon Christmas Day.

“It’s just stuff,” she said, explaining her mood, while friends and relatives squished across the swampy carpeting, toting some necessities out of the two-story house.

“We are fine. We have wonderful firefighters, wonderful neighbors,” she said. “It may hit us tonight. But merry Christmas to all!”

Helen and her husband, John, had been celebrating the holiday with their two adult children and their spouses and a grandchild before a cozy fire. Helen walked into the backyard to water some plants and saw the roof ablaze.

Embers from the fireplace had ignited the wood shakes and within minutes the roof and much of the second floor was ablaze, said authorities.

It was a scary moment.

“We cleared the house and the firefighters were here within five minutes,” said Kathryn Ehrman, the Murrays’ daughter, visiting from San Francisco with her husband, Richard. “The firefighters were terrific. They saved part of the house and the downstairs.”

Orange County Fire Authority spokesman Dennis Shell estimated damage to the five-bedroom house at about $120,000. Three dozen firefighters answered the call, containing the blaze on the closely packed residential street.

“We had a little bit of a breeze. . . . They did a great job of keeping it from spreading to neighboring homes,” he said. “Their roofs got a little bit of singeing.”

Firefighters also covered the furniture on the first floor and much of the carpeting in the downstairs to reduce the damage.

Still, the devastation seemed significant: From the first-floor Richard Ehrman could see the blue sky through the charred roof joists and freshly minted charcoal was getting crunched like sand underfoot.

Three hours after the fire was out, the family was gathering the fixings for Christmas dinner, which Helen said she will prepare at her father-in-law’s place in Stanton. The Red Cross is putting the Murrays and the Ehrmans up till Monday at a local hotel.

Family members were still looking for three of the four family cats; all escaped the blaze but only one had returned home.

Helen Murray indicated no one should fret about them. “They are pretty self-sufficient,” she said. She could have been talking about her family.

Out front, a red reindeer flag stood on a pole jutting from the house: unburned and unbowed.

“If it had to happen, this is the way it should happen,” said Richard Ehrman. “We all get out and no one got hurt. We are not looking at it as bleak and depressing: We are all safe.”