Fire Routs Family From Longtime Anaheim Home

A family of five was left homeless Sunday after a fast-moving fire swept through their Anaheim home of 46 years--a house that was uninsured.

“No fire insurance,” said Susan Fiedler, the daughter of the elderly couple who owned the home. “My mom discontinued it, saying she couldn’t afford it.”

Fiedler, 42, had grown up in the house and had moved back in with her parents several years ago, along with her two children, Suzanne Fiedler, 7, and Jon Fontes, 5.

The home is owned by retired postal worker Ron Fiedler, 80, and his wife, Ruth, 74.

Fiedler said she awoke about 7 a.m. to “some kind of noise.” She said she ran toward the kitchen and saw the blaze.

“I screamed,” she said. “People said they heard me two blocks away. I grabbed my kids and my parents and called 911.”

Her father went to the backyard to get a hose to fight the fire but was forced back by the heat and had to be pulled to safety over a neighbor’s fence, she said.

“It’s pretty hard to watch everything you worked for go up,” Fiedler said.

When firefighters arrived at the home at 2517 W. Conley Ave., flames were shooting through the windows, Battalion Chief Bruce Jacobson said. Firefighters extinguished the blaze within 20 minutes, he said.

The fire, which caused an estimated $100,000 damage, was caused by a cigarette discarded near a chair in the family room, Jacobson said. No other homes were damaged, he said.

Ron Fiedler said his wife had stayed up smoking until about 4:30 a.m. and apparently left the lighted cigarette in the family room.

He and his wife bought the house in 1954, he said, and decades of family memories were wrapped within its walls.

“It hurts a lot,” he said.

Susan Fiedler said the house was equipped with smoke alarms, but she didn’t hear them go off until after she had gotten her family out of the house. She ran back to rescue the family’s pet keeshond but was forced to leave a pet parakeet behind, she said.

Fiedler and her relatives were forced to flee with nothing but what they were wearing. Fiedler said neighbors gave her children some clothes, and the Red Cross had given her a voucher to buy new clothing for the family.

She was unsure where the family would find another home, but she said they would get by somehow.

“I’m just so glad that I got them out,” she said.

Fiedler graduated last week from Cypress College, where she studied biology, and had hoped to attend a Cal State campus in the fall.

“I figured if I live on a shoestring for a couple of years and get my degree, then I could take care of [the family],” she said. “It’ll be all right. They’re alive.”

The Red Cross will put the family up at a local motel until they find a new home.