August 19, 2001

PRESS RELEASE

To: Newsroom for Immediate Release

Contact: Brian A. Crawford, Public Information Officer

Phone: 673-6652, cell: 455-2609, page: 675-2137

Woman in Critical Condition After Morning Fire

A Shreveport woman remains in critical condition at LSUHSC this afternoon after an early morning fire ravaged her Werner Park home.

Lillie Dixon, 36, sustained second and third degree burns to more than 90 percent of her body as she ran through the home at 5018 Werner Avenue in an attempt to escape the fire. Her husband, Dennis Stewart, 42, and their two children, girls, ages 16, and 9, were able to escape, relatively unharmed, out of a front bedroom window.

Fire investigators say that the family arrived home around 3 or 3:30 a.m. and decided to fry some chicken on the kitchen stove. The children and Dixon retired to their respective bedrooms as Stewart stayed up tending the chicken. At some point Stewart went to his bedroom and fell asleep with his wife. Approximately fifteen to twenty minutes later, the children ran into the parent’s room alerting them of smoke and fire in the house.

As the family attempted to make their escape, they found fire had already consumed the kitchen, dining room and hallway of the home, blocking their door exits. They raced to a front bedroom unaffected by the fire, and broke out a window. For unknown reasons, Dixon did not follow Stewart and the two children out the window, instead running back through the house, encountering smoke and fire before emerging afire on the front porch of the home where she then collapsed. Stewart and neighbors raced to Dixon’s aid and carried her to a water-clay puddle that had accumulate in the front yard, next to the driveway and street.

When firefighters arrived at the home at 4:09 a.m., flames were rolling out of the front door and windows and over the porch, said Captain Kevin Chatelain. Firefighters and paramedics immediately began treating Dixon as other’s hurried to extinguish the blaze. It took crews less than 10 minutes to bring the fire under control. Dixon was rushed to the Burn Treatment Center at LSUHSC. The home’s property damage is listed as heavy. There was a smoke detector in the home but the battery had been removed. According to Stewart, the family had removed it because it kept going off when they cooked.

STATS: Cooking is the leading cause of fire death and home fire injury in the U.S. Annually, more than 5,000 deaths and 25,000 injuries occur each year as the result of residential fires. Approximately 88 percent of U.S. homes have at least one smoke alarm. However, it is estimated that some 40 percent of those alarms are nonfunctional. ###