Jackson Free Press

Carolyn Johnson remembered getting up to go work about 7 p.m. on Thursday, June 17, to see that a fire had engulfed the kitchen in her house on Burton Street. The house eventually burned to the ground. She blames delayed response from the Jackson Fire Department for what happened.

"I lost everything, but the thing about it is, I am really disappointed in Jackson, our mayor, department by department. The house could have been saved," Johnson told the Jackson Free Press by phone on Friday, June 25. “They are supposed to be here to help us.”

"I opened the door. I said, ‘oh my God, there's a fire in the kitchen.’ So I ran into the kitchen when I saw the fire, it was already like up in the ceiling," Johnson explained on the phone.

Her attempts to put out the fire did not work. "I tried to use the flour or something to put it out, but it was too much," she added.

Johnson remembers telling her son to call 911, and her "son said he had to hang up and call again because they didn't answer."

"And when he called the second time, a woman put him on hold and said, ‘well, I'm going to transfer you to the fire department.”

It took the Fire Department 15 to 20 minutes to get to the house, she believes, and she disputed the information she got from the Fire Department on Monday. "They said we called at 6:58 p.m., and they came at 7:03 p.m. Ain't no way they came at 7:03 p.m. I didn't get up until 7 o'clock to go and take a shower, so I knew that was a lie," she said. "They didn't get here 15 to 25 minutes from the time we called, and we called like 7 or 7:01." Jackson Fire Station 24 on 1240 Wiggins Road is less than one mile away.

Real-estate broker Brandee Harrington, who has Johnson as a client, said during the public-comment period at the Jackson City Council meeting on Tuesday, June 22, that Johnson's family believes a problem with the 911 dispatch was responsible for their loss and explained that the accident began from a grease fire.

Harrington told the city council that the family is in a difficult position of not having a house to stay in and commented on the difficulty in the housing market in the city. “She ran out of the house. Her sons, she has five sons, they obviously were there. And the family at this point has no home,” she said.

"Being a licensed real-estate broker here in Jackson, Mississippi, we all know that the housing market right now is very dismal," she continued. "We know that there's not a lot of housing, especially for renters; and if not, the rental fees are astronomical."

"You know what the fire department told her. They were at another house fire. The neighbors, the community (on Burton street) … all looked and listened and heard that they basically weren't important that night, hence why her house burned to the ground."

The Jackson Free Press reported in May about an apartment-building fire in Jackson where residents complained that they could not get a swift response from the nearby fire precinct.

Mayor Chokwe A. Lumumba commiserated with the family at the city council meeting and asked for more information to investigate what went wrong that day. He said that his administration has employed temporary staff for the 911 system, but that the problem with poor response seems to go beyond staffing, and there is an ongoing investigation to get to the bottom of it.

"There has been a challenge on the technical side, too," Lumumba said. "It doesn't sound like your particular event is based on a technical (issue), but like I said, I'd like to research that further."

Johnson set up a GoFundMe last week asking for assistance to get back on her feet. “I’m writing (to) you for some help,” she wrote there. “Unfortunately due to my house fire I (lost) everything; I mean everything I work(ed) hard for has gone up in smoke.”

Email story tips to city/county reporter Kayode Crown at [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter at @kayodecrown.