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Father saves 3 kids

• No one was seriously injured in an early morning house fire off Moultrie Road.

J.D. Sumner

ALBANY — An Albany man rescued three children from their burning home early Wednesday morning, fire officials say.

Shankia Nix, 30, reportedly told fire officials that he was awakened by a screeching smoke detector just before 3:30 a.m. and found his single-wide mobile home ablaze, Albany Fire Chief James Carswell said.

With fire separating the children’s bedroom from his and his wife’s, Nix left the mobile home and went around the burning structure to his children’s bedroom window and smashed it in, Carswell said.

“He smashed the window and reached in and pulled the three out of the room before anyone was seriously hurt,” Carswell said. “I think he and two of the children were treated at the scene for some minor cuts, but everyone was OK.”

Nix’s wife and a fourth child were able to flee the home without assistance.

According to Carswell, reports seemed to indicate that the parents cooked a late meal for the children after getting off work and then put everyone to bed. The stove, which appeared to have been left on, caught fire and quickly engulfed the structure, Carswell said.

“The working smoke detectors kept this from being a fatal fire,” Carswell said. “Had the father not been woke up by the smoke detector, someone would’ve inevitably died.”

The fire gutted the small mobile home at Oak Grove Estates, causing an estimated $30,000 in damage.

Kitchen fires are the leading cause of fire-related property damage in Albany and often lead to serious injury or death, Carswell said.

On June 14, 81-year-old Mattie Sherman was found dead at her back door on Williard Avenue after investigators say she was cooking something on the stove when it caught fire and fumes overcame her.

Four people have died from house fires in Albany this year, a number that is up from previous years, Carswell said.

Sandra Frazier Subry, 37, Derrick Fedd, 24, Tony Shipman, 36, and Sherman all died as a result of house fires. The fires that claimed Fedd and Sherman were both kitchen fires, officials say.

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