Fire puts mother of 13 out of her East St. Louis home. Here’s how you can help.
The East St. Louis mother whose home caught on fire says she and her children lost everything and need help putting their lives back together.
Camelia Davison was at home with nine of her 13 children around midnight on Sept. 25 when she smelled smoke. She was able to get herself and her kids out of the home on North 44th Street at Lincoln Street before a second floor bedroom became enveloped in flames and plumes of smoke.
“The blaze started on a mattress in an upstairs bedroom,” East St. Louis Fire Chief Jason Blackmon said.
Rev. Larita Rice-Barnes, pastor of Empowerment of Grace Church, started an account at Regions Bank to help the family recover some of what it’s lost and find a new home. Contributions to “Davison Relief Fund” can be made at any Regions Bank location.
Davison said she believes the fire was accidentally caused by a candle her daughters were using in a tent they built upstairs while they were on their chrome books watching YouTube.
“Two of my sons were downstairs watching television,” she said. “Two of my daughters were upstairs in a tent they built watching YouTube. They were using a candle to see. They ran down stairs for a few seconds and I guess the candle might have fallen. I don’t know.”
Her four sons and nine daughters range in age from 8 months to 16 years old. Four of them were not in the house when the fire occurred.
“I am just very blessed and thankful to God that me and my family were able to get out unharmed,” Davidson said. “My family is all I got. If something happened to them I don’t know what I would do.”
Davison said there is only one television in the house and speculates that the girls ran downstairs to catch a glimpse of what their brothers were watching.
“I smelled smoke. The smoke alarms started going off. I got up screaming and crying and rushing to get my children out of that house,” she said. “When the fire department got there, the fire had gotten really bad.”
The family is not able to go back to their two-story structure and is still waiting on the East St. Louis Housing Authority to help them find a new home.
In the meantime, they’ve lost everything they owned, Davison said. Money from the Red Cross was used to purchase clothes for the children.
“Family is everything to me. My little family is all I got. And, everybody is pretty close,” she said.
“That is something I never want to go through again. It is a lot to handle. I was so scared. Anything could have happened, but God was on my side. He put his shield of protection around me and my children and we are alive today.”
