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Fire cost Warren family their home, but 5-year-old saved their lives

Posted at 5:15 PM, Oct 19, 2017
and last updated 2017-10-20 10:54:37-04

Everything in a Warren home was destroyed early Wednesday morning, but the family that lived there says they’re alive because of the quick action of their five-year-old daughter.

RELATED: Click here to donate to the family's Go Fund Me account.

“All we seen was smoke,” said Rosa Conley, who says the fire started around 5:30 Wednesday morning. “(My boyfriend) grabbed the baby out of her playpen and threw her in our room and closed the door.”

The fire's cause is still being investigated, but it’s left this family of four—including an infant—with nothing but the clothes on their back. 

“We were asleep, (five-year-old) Jamirah came in our room and she woke us up,” Conley said.

Jamirah woke up her mother’s boyfriend, Isiah Smith.

“I just remember her coming in waking me up, and when I looked up, I could see she was getting ready to tell me,” Smith said. “And once I seen the fire, I just grabbed (the children) and put them in the room and shut the door. “

The fire seemed small at first, Conley said, and the family tried to put it out on their own.

“I took the garbage out the garbage can in the bathroom,” Conley said. “We were filling it up with water trying to put the fire out, it wouldn’t go out.”

The family says it took only three minutes for the flames to engulf the entire home. 

Today they’re living in temporary housing but they don’t know where they’ll be tomorrow.  The money for a hotel has already run out, and the food they bought yesterday is almost gone too.

“We lost everything.  Now we just gotta start over,” Smith said. “We just don’t know where."