Elderly Woman Injured In Fire At Bixby Retirement Community

An 80-year-old woman in Bixby lost her home to fire Wednesday.

She was so close to the fire, it singed her hair.

The fog kept neighbors from seeing the smoke until the fire was really going.

Firefighting foam washed down the streets as the smoke blended with fog around Spicewood Pond.

The fire gutted a large house on the end of a retirement home development.

Steve Williams saw the trucks coming from down the street.

“Here comes another one, and by the time I got out the door, it was already engulfed and out the roof,” said Williams. “There was no slowing it down.”

The fire that started in the garage but quickly spread through the house.

Firefighters put as much water on it as they could, but it was mostly a lost cause.

“Started an attack from the outside as the fire had grown to the point we couldn't do an interior attack anymore,” explained Bixby Fire Chief Bryan Wood.

The elderly woman who lived in the home got out and neighbors watched over her.

Firefighters were able to pull out a few special belongings, like an old church pew and some old movie film.

But many things, like a cabinet of important papers, were burned or close to it.

“There's nothing in that house that could be saved,” said Williams. “The garage was engulfed so quick.

The homes were built ten years ago and each shares one common wall with the neighbors.

It this case, it's a firewall that did exactly what it's supposed to.

After the fire was out, firefighters started cutting away the roofline. The empty unit on the other side of the wall had only minor smoke damage.

“There's a firewall that separates the units and that basically helped us stop the fire,” said Chief Wood.

Williams recalled, “It stopped it from going on down; we were blessed on that part.”

The fire department confirms it started in the garage, but they haven't determined the cause.