WASHINGTON — A D.C. police officer has only the clothes on her back after her Temple Hills, Maryland, home caught fire twice in one day last weekend.
The blaze started at officer Alexia Jones’ neighbor’s house sometime after midnight Saturday.
“I didn’t think it was bad,” Jones told WTOP. “I just saw little flames shooting out of the side of the house.” And fire crews were hard at work putting out the blaze, she added.
But the flames eventually jumped to her attic causing some damage to her second floor. After crews extinguished the fire, Jones went to stay with family overnight.
But when she returned later that morning, the fire crews were back — and her house was damaged beyond repair.
“When I get down the street, I see all the fire apparatus,” Jones said. “I see the firefighters are in the backyard. And I’m looking like, ‘What’s going on now?’ And they say, ‘The fire reignited.'”
Jones said she lost everything, including photos of her two sons, her grandson and her parents’ belongings stored in her home after they passed away.
“I was known to have cookouts — that deck meant so much to me,” she said. “I just love family time and especially around the holidays.”
A fire reigniting is rare, especially six hours later, according to Prince George’s County Fire spokesman Mark Brady. He said firefighters pulled down walls at the homes on Jones’ street, 28th Parkway, and used a thermal imaging camera to look for heat sources before declaring the first fire extinguished.
“Because of the first fire, we had displaced both families from either side of the duplex. No one was home to be able to detect the smoke or feel the heat building up and the fire was allowed to grow in intensity,” he said of the second fire.
The second fire left Jones’ home a total loss. She has home insurance and the Red Cross set her up in a hotel for the week, but she only has the clothes on her back. Even her police uniforms are gone, she said.
But Jones said she’s not angry and said she thinks firefighters “do great jobs.”
“I honestly believe this is one of those things that just happens,” she said.
Firefighter investigators still do not know what caused the initial fire that Brady said appears to have started on Jones’ neighbors’ back deck and climbed up the back of the house.
Jones is an officer who works in the seventh district and said she’s already heard from people in the community reaching out to help. The D.C. Police Union has started a GoFundMe account for Jones to get back on her feet.
