DETROIT – A chain reaction of events in Detroit left a family without a home.
“He came knocking on my door, hollering, ‘Vaughn, Vaughn, come on man. You got to get out of there. Your house is on fire,’” Wardell Vaughn Arrington said.
That’s what Arrington woke up to early Saturday morning. He ran outside and saw that his house -- near Savage Avenue on Detroit’s east side -- was on fire. Local 4 viewers sent us cellphone video of the intense flames.
Fire and rescue crews responded and determined a car had struck a utility pole.
“The gentleman that was driving that truck, I believe, jumped over the speed hump, very fast, lost control and hit the telephone pole,” Arrington said.
He said the home can’t be saved.
“You can see straight up to the roof where they had to tear the insulation down,” Arrington said. “All of that is laying in there. It’s still smoldering, the smoke is.”
“My father’s home is destroyed,” said Vaughn Arrington, the homeowner’s son. “We have to figure out where he has to go. This is upsetting for me.”
The homeowner and neighbors claim DTE crews could have handled the situation differently to prevent the wires from igniting he home. A spokesperson for DTE told Local 4 that the company is working to clarify what happened.