Moses Lake family seeks a home after fire
Candice Boutilier/Columbia Basin HeraldA Moses Lake family is working to find a new home after a fire destroyed their house and their belongings last week.
MOSES LAKE - Two children lost their toys to a fire in Moses Lake Sept. 10 and their grandmother lost her family photos and keepsakes.
Their Division Street home was destroyed by fire.
Deborah Price and her two children Lucian, 2, and Skyla, 4, left their home that morning to enroll the children in daycare, Price said. Her mother Pamela Willmorth, who owns the home, accompanied them.
The fire is believed to have started about five minutes after they left, she said.
"I lost everything," Willmorth said.
All her appliances, furniture, clothes, linens and family photos were destroyed. Trinkets she spent years collecting were damaged but some were salvaged.
When the four returned home from the daycare center visit, they saw smoke and fire trucks. At first they thought a nearby field caught fire.
Price exited the vehicle and saw it was their home. She went back to her mother and told her.
"So I started crying," Willmorth said.
They say they are thankful no one was inside the home during the fire.
Willmorth's 17-year-old granddaughter was staying at the house too. Normally she would have been sleeping in her room at the time of the fire but she broke routine and visited a family member instead, Willmorth said.
"We would have probably lost her," she said.
"That's the main thing, everybody was safe," Price said.
The family visited the home since the fire.
"It looked like a house of wax," Price said. "It was black and melted."
The children's toys were ruined. They attempted to keep the children from seeing their toys.
Skyla said the house was scary and made her sad.
Lucian said they need a new home now.
They have nowhere to live and need money to pay for a rental home. They are staying in emergency housing.
"It was always a safe place," Price said about her mother's home.
Price and her children were staying at the house temporarily so she could save money to find a rental for her and her two children.
All the money she saved burned in the fire, she said.
A donation account is set up at Washington Mutual at 323 S. Division St. in Moses Lake under Pamela Willmorth's name.
Their family is organizing future fund-raisers to help them find a home and furnish it.