Elderly woman and her caretaker were inside when fire broke out at Warner Robins home

A 76-year-old woman and her caretaker escaped a fire at a Station Way residence Thursday, but the family dog was killed.

"When we got here, the structure was heavily involved," Warner Robins Assistant Fire Chief Chris Cannady said. "We had four units on scene, and we knocked the fire down quickly."

Discarded charcoal apparently sparked the fire, he said.

"The caretaker, from our understanding, was using a grill on the back porch, and the charcoal that was used was discarded in a container," Cannady said. "And it sounds like it might have been sitting too close to the residence, which started the fire."

The woman was identified as Margaret Jones. The caretaker was not immediately identified.

The full extent of the damage to the home was not immediately known. But it was "pretty significant," Cannady said, citing how much of the home was ablaze when firefighters arrived and the time it took to put it out.

The blaze started in the back of the residence at 4:15 p.m. Firefighters arrived minutes after the fire started and had it under control by about 4:30 p.m., he said.

An off-duty Houston County firefighter had tweeted of a possible entrapment when the fire call first went out. He later tweeted that there was no entrapment.

This story was originally published June 14, 2018 at 6:37 PM with the headline "Elderly woman and her caretaker were inside when fire broke out at Warner Robins home."