A young Lingleville couple is facing a large amount of home repair costs as they await the birth of their child following a fire during the Sunday, May 10 storm.
Aubrey (Kellar) Broadbent was 35 weeks pregnant and resting in a freshly finished nursery when she saw a bright flash outside the window. She called her mom to say she thought lightning had hit the house. (She would later learn it had struck a water spigot on the end of the house. That strike caused a copper pipe to burst which shorted out wiring and started an electrical fire.)
Aubrey found it difficult to get out of the chair because the electric recliner wouldn’t respond.
Once she got out of the room, she found the master bedroom flooding and called her husband, Frederick, who works out of state. They heard banging on the front door and Aubrey said she thought the house was on fire. “I remember my husband saying, ‘I’m on my way’ and hanging up,” Aubrey recalled. Her mother, brother and aunt were at the door and helped her gather items and rescue the pets from under the bed before escaping when they couldn’t withstand the smoke.
“The next minutes felt like hours waiting on emergency personnel,” Aubrey said. She went to sit with her next door neighbor and said she will forever be grateful for her and her husband that night.
She was also grateful to her family and the responders who answered the call: Erath County Fire/Rescue, Stephenville Fire Department, Dublin Volunteer Fire Department, Lingleville Volunteer Fire Department, Erath County Sheriff’s Office and Erath County EMS.
“If it wasn’t for them jumping in, we definitely could’ve lost our entire house,” Aubrey said of the emergency crews.
She said she had slept very little when they went to see the house the next day and remarked that it looked good from the outside. However, she wasn’t able to go inside due to the smoke damage.
“I finally got to see pictures and that’s when I lost it,” she said. The nursery and items received in their baby shower were lost as was the master bedroom, pictures and a lot of other items she would miss.
“I really was grateful for my grandpa who built this house the way he did,” she said, noting the fire was contained mostly to walls and ceilings. The concern now is smoke damage to furniture and potential electrical damage to appliances.
As the couple gets ready to welcome their first child, they are now facing around $16,000 in repair costs as well as replacing damaged items.
Aubrey and Frederick said they are so grateful for the generosity of others in replacing baby items. If any want to help through donating items or assisting with repair costs, a gofundme has been created at gofund.me/d0d16a3e0