According to local officials, three children and their grandmother died last week in Houston during a power outage during a power outage.
Firefighters arrived at Jackie Pham Nguyen’s home on Feb. 16 at about 2 a.m., according to Doug Adolph, a spokesman for Sugar Land City.
The structure was already “engulfed” in flames, Adolph said, with Nguyen outside the home. Nguyen, the mother of the three children, had to be “physically restrained from running back to her burning house,” Adolph said.
After the fire was put out, firefighters found the bodies of three children and their grandmother.
Adolph said their neighborhood had been without electricity for hours and that the family had posted on social media that they were lighting their fireplace to stay warm in the dark.
However, Adolph warns that the investigation is ongoing. “We have not yet identified a cause of the fire, and it is possible we will never do that,” he said.
In an interview with CNN, Nguyen remembers her children, 11-year-old Olivia, 8-year-old Edison and five-year-old Colette, as ‘phenomenal, incredible, little bad people’, and her mother as a refugee from Vietnam living with nothing. did not arrive in Kansas, sacrificed much for her children and whose love was ‘tenfold when it comes to the grandchildren’.
Jackie Pham Nguyen did not immediately respond to a NBC News request for comment, nor did Nathan Nguyen, the children’s father.
Dual crowdfunding pages online, presented by both parents and verified by GoFundMe, remember the children as ‘eternal sources of light and wonder’ and ‘angels’ with ‘funky and sassy attitudes’.
Together, the pages raised hundreds of thousands of dollars from Friday night.
In a statement on the fundraising page, Jackie Pham Nguyen thanked donors for their support and said that we want to be ideal to honor Olivia, Edison and Colette with a lasting foundation of some kind.
“Our hearts are broken at the moment,” Nguyen wrote. ‘Your kindness, however, gave us a little comfort to pull us through. We are eternally grateful to you all. ‘
