Devastating Irmo apartment fire caused by child playing with fireworks
Devastating Irmo apartment fire caused by child playing with fireworks By WIS News 10 Staff | December 24, 2020 at 3:34 PM EST - Updated December 24 at 6:01 PM
COLUMBIA, S.C. (WIS) - An apartment fire that left 35 people homeless was caused by a child playing with fireworks, Irmo Fire Department officials confirmed.
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The fire started around 1 p.m. Wednesday at the River Oaks Apartments in the 5300 block of Bush River Road. That’s near the intersection with St. Andrews Road.
While firefighters rushed to rescue six people on the second and third floors of the apartment building, a mother dropped her two small children a 1-month-old and 1-year-old from a third-story window to save them, officials said. Bystanders caught the children.
Mother who jumped from window during apartment fire braces for difficult Christmas
Community organizing donation drive to help families who lost homes in Irmo fire By Adam Mintzer | December 24, 2020 at 7:01 PM EST - Updated December 24 at 11:12 PM
COLUMBIA, S.C. (WIS) - As a fire ripped through an Irmo apartment complex, one mother, Shawnteal Boyd, made a potentially lifesaving but dangerous decision: dropping her one-month-old infant and one-year-old child from her third-story apartment to bystanders below.
“I was thinking, ‘oh my gosh, how did anyone make it out of there alive?’” Boyd’s mother Stephanie McGraw said.
McGraw helped care for her daughter’s children along with the children’s great grandparents at their home in Columbia after the fire. The fire displaced 35 people and damaged 10 units of the River Oaks Apartment complex.