Northwest Bradenton house fire displaces mother, sons

MANATEE — Barbara Fitch heard pops in the middle of the night that woke her, and she immediately smelled smoke, prompting her to call 911.

Not knowing if her two grown sons were home, she ran upstairs and banged on their doors, getting no answers. By the time she turned around to leave the house, a thin veil of smoke was creeping up the stairs of her home, in the 1100 block of 64th Street Northwest.

Her neighbor, Ted Bozzetti, awoke to a barking dog riled up from commotion outside his house. Bozzetti came outside to see his neighbor’s garage in flames, and Fitch running, screaming through her front yard to arriving Manatee County Sheriff’s Office deputies.

“She was totally upset, screaming to the deputies that she didn’t know if her sons were inside,” Bozzetti said.

It turned out to everyone’s relief that Fitch’s sons were not home, and no one suffered injuries in the blaze.

The fire, however, caused between $100,000 and $200,000 damage to the house, according to fire officials.

“I am devastated,” Fitch said. “I have lived here 15 years, and raised three kids in that house.”

West Manatee Fire Rescue Capt. Tom Sousa said firefighters received the initial call on the fire at 2:43 a.m., and arrived at the home 13 minutes later.

Firefighters found flames and smoke billowing from the garage, and evacuated two homes adjacent to Fitch’s house.

“I woke up to my mom shaking me and yelling at me that we had to get out of the house,” said Pat Bower, whose family’s home is behind Fitch’s house. “When we got out, the flames looked 50 feet in the air, two times higher than the trees.”

Firefighters were able to contain the fire to the garage, but the house had extensive smoke and heat damage.

Sousa said the cause of the fire was still under investigation, but there did not appear to be anything suspicious.