Candle starts fire while single mom runs short errand

Neighbors who sprayed water through a window until firefighters arrived helped lessen the damage.

By TIM GRANT

© St. Petersburg Times, published March 13, 2000

TAMPA -- In the time it took to fetch a gallon of milk from the corner store, a lighted candle tipped over Sunday and burned a single mother's newly remodeled home.

No one was home at the time. Giselle Grey had taken her 9-year-old daughter, Andrea, and her dog to the store. When they returned about 8:30 p.m., neighbors were in Grey's front yard trying to quench the flames with a garden house they had stuck through the window.

"I was only gone for five minutes," Grey said. "I left the candle on when I went to the store for milk. Everything I worked for is ruined."

The fire was restricted to the family room, but there is smoke damage throughout the house at 6908 Lynn Ave., said Tampa firefighter Jeff Bader, acting captain.

Neighbors were still spraying water through the window when firefighters arrived.

"If they hadn't done that, we might have had more" fire damage," Bader said. "The pity of this is, she had just remodeled the house. I'll tell you it's a really clean home. That's what she's so upset about."

Bader said the fire will be classified as an accident. He said the candle apparently tipped over and set fire to either a couch or the carpet. He estimates the fire and smoke damage at $10,000.

Grey, 33, works as a hairdresser at Sisters & Co Hair Design in Tampa.

"I put everything I had into remodeling this house," Grey said. "I did it without any help from anyone."

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