Macon sisters die in Carmen Place house fire
Flames shot out the front windows of a Lynmore Estates home early Tuesday in a house fire that killed two Macon sisters and three of their dogs.
Virginia “Geraldine” Christian’s last act of kindness was saving her nephew, who safely got out of the burning house at 734 Carmen Place.
Just before 6:30 a.m., the 64-year-old widow woke up her nephew to alert him to the fire, said Christian’s longtime neighbor Billy Brockman, who threw on his shoes and rushed across the street to try to help.
Christian and her 51-year-old sister, Marica Sauls, were still inside when Brockman reached Sauls’ son, who was headed back inside the burning one-story house at the corner of Marion Avenue.
“He was trying to get them out but the smoke was too bad for anybody to try to go back in there and help them,” Brockman said of the intense flames.
“The two front windows right there at the front of the house, they were just boiling out of it. The rest of the house, there was just smoke coming out of all the windows and cracks in the walls and stuff,” said Brockman, whose wife woke him up about the fire as she called 911.
There was little he could do, except preventing Sauls’ son from being the third victim.
“It was boiling. I wouldn’t let him go back in. I told him ‘No.’ He wouldn’t have made it,” Brockman said.
Firefighters quickly arrived, he said, but it was too late to save the sisters, who likely died of smoke inhalation at Medical Center, Navicent Health.
Macon-Bibb County fire investigator Lt. Ben Gleaton determined smoking materials ignited the couch in the front living room in the accidental blaze.
No smoke detector was initially found in the home.
About 20 minutes into fighting the blaze, a Macon-Bibb County firefighter called out “Mayday! Mayday!” as the fire became too intense.
“All units inside the building evacuate immediately,” a 911 dispatcher said.
Firefighters moved the women to safety and continued to fight the flames.
Sauls appeared gravely ill and was lying on the ground in her nightgown as paramedics loaded Christian onto a stretcher, sitting up, Brockman said.
He expected Christian would live, but later learned she was pronounced dead at the hospital.
The women were the second and third fire deaths in Bibb County in 2016, Gleaton said.
Chief Deputy Coroner Lonnie Miley said the women did not appear to have suffered major burns.
“People don’t realize that’s why you have to drop down low. It doesn’t take but one breath of that air to disorient you,” Miley said.
Only one of the ladies’ four dogs survived the fire.
The dog was taken from the backyard to the Macon-Bibb Animal Welfare shelter.
Word of the women’s death quickly spread through the streets of the low-income, tight-knit neighborhood.
Glenda Harden and Christian went to Countryside Baptist Church, just down the street.
“She was very sweet,” Harden said. “She’s been living out here in the neighborhood for 40 years, or more. She comes by my house every day and I wave at her.”
The fatal fire reminded Harden of a blaze in June of 2013 that killed a mother and three of her children in a duplex on the other end of Carmen Place.
The loss of Christian and her sister also will hurt the community.
“It’s bad. It’s very bad. Everybody’s going to miss her who knew her out here,” Harden said. “We never know where death is going to end up at, but we’re surely going to miss her.”
Habitat for Humanity’s Sundra Woodford said Christian and Sauls were some of the first neighbors to get on board with the organization’s quest to bring new life to the neighborhood once called the Peach Orchard.
“Just really active and engaged in this neighborhood and really excited about all the changes that were going on here from the new home construction to cleaning up the neighborhood,” Woodford said. “This is a sad time for this neighborhood, but I know, based on how they do care for each other, that they will get through this together.”
This story was originally published April 26, 2016 at 8:10 AM with the headline "Macon sisters die in Carmen Place house fire."