Computer may have sparked blaze

Published 12:11 am Wednesday, November 19, 2008

FRANKLIN—Barbara Kasey could only shake her head and watch while firefighters blasted into her apartment home Tuesday night to battle smoke and flames there.

“They are going to put me out,” she said, wearing a T-shirt that said “I can handle anything. I have kids.”

Firefighters were dispatched to Berkley Court apartments on Cameron Street just before 7 p.m. Tuesday.

They found smoke coming from the top floor of Kasey’s 4-bedroom end unit.

Kasey said the fire, which she believes was electrical, started in her 15-year-old daughter’s room.

“We were downstairs watching TV when we heard the smoke detector go off,” she said. “The firefighters said my daughter’s computer started the fire and then the bed caught on fire. I went upstairs and it looked like a horror film.”

Kasey said her three daughters — ages, 16, 15 and 14 — and her grandson got out of the house, along with her friend, who asked not to be identified.

Neighbors scrambled to find clothes for the 15-year-old girl, who was huddled in the car in a towel because she had just gotten out of the shower.

Kasey, who just moved to Franklin 16 months ago from Norfolk, said officials from the Housing Authority put her family in a local hotel for the night.

“We’ll see what happens tomorrow,” she said.