Fire ruins home on Grant Boulevard in Lehigh Acres

Lehigh Acres firefighters responded to an early Thursday morning fire that tore through a home on Grant Boulevard.

According to the Lehigh Acres Fire Control and Rescue District, crews arrived at the fire just after 5 a.m. The garage side of the home was already completely engulfed in flames.

Flames and smoke lit up a dark sky while a mother, her husband, and 4-year-old son watched everything they owned melt away.

“I just felt nervous. I thought we would die. Very nervous. Very scared,” said one of the renters.

The woman inside was too shaken up to show her face after the flames burned the home she was renting inside out.

“Smell like burning, like something is burning. I can’t explain too much because I was sleeping, but it was weird. Thanks to a gentleman passing near the house, he called the rescue.”

When the smoke cleared, there just wasn’t much left.

“The 911 call came in, right, just after five o’clock in the morning. By the time our firefighters got here, we actually had two engines pull up on scene at the same time. Most of the garage area of the home was already fully involved in flames,” said Katie Heck, with Lehigh Fire.

“He was walking to knock on my door. And if that didn’t happen, we would have burned and died,” said the mother.

That mom said someone she didn’t know knocked on their door and saved their lives.

Heck said it took 25,000 gallons of water to put the flames out.

“We lost everything. Money. We lost the bed. We lost my clothes. Everything. Everything”

All occupants and a dog safely evacuated the house, and no injuries were reported.

Investigators have labeled the fire as unintentional due to an electrical failure in the garage.