Mother who lost her three children and her mom in a fire during Texas power outages talks about the tragic night
(CNN)As Texas hobbles back to normal life after a devastating winter storm, one mother is still trying to come to terms with a heart-wrenching and unfathomable personal tragedy.
Jackie Pham Nguyen
lost her mother, Loan Le, and her three children, Olivia, 11, Edison,
8, and Colette, 5 in a fire while trying to stay warm at her home in the
Houston suburb of Sugarland during the power outages that crippled the state.
Their deaths are considered storm related, according to the chief medical examiner for Fort Bend County.
Nguyen says she doesn't remember much of what happened in the early morning of February 16.
When
the power went out in her house, the family lit the fireplace and
played board games and card games, she said. They went to bed by around
9:30 p.m. as the kids had tired themselves out, Nguyen told CNN's Don
Lemon.
She
tucked the kids into bed and the next thing she knew she was in the
hospital and a fireman and police officer were telling her no one else
had made it. She says she doesn't fully remember what happened, but
recalls being on the first floor where her bedroom is and being unable
to get upstairs to the children's bedrooms.
Nguyen
told Lemon her mother Le was the reason she could be a working mom.
From afternoon pickups from school to grocery shopping, Nguyen says her
mother was the reason she could be a single working mom and also be
involved in the lives of her children and their activities.
"I
really wanted my girls to see that women can do it all and I wanted my
son to be the kind of man that steps up. Like I said, my mom really kind
of bridged that gap for me to be able to do that and for my kids to be
able to see that," Nguyen said.
Loan Le and her grandchildren Colette, Edison and Olivia.
As for her children, she told Lemon about their big and beautiful personalities.
"She
just really loved and cared for people in such a deep way," Nguyen said
of Olivia. "In November, she spent weeks curating a Spotify play list
for her brother Edison for his birthday as a gift to him... and she
noticed that I was listening to it so much that she made me one for my
birthday, which we all just celebrated together just a few weeks ago,"
she said.
Nguyen
said Edison was born shortly after her own father passed away, and he
filled a "gaping hole" in her heart. "He was a lot like my dad in many
ways, so I think that gave my mom a great feeling of comfort, feeling
like my dad was still with us," she said.
She
said her youngest Collette, or Coco as she was affectionately known,
"wanted to do it all." "Words can't capture, how big her personality
was," Nguyen added.
Nguyen
said she has a support system that's helping her through this difficult
time. She is staying with her brother at the moment, and her two
sisters have flown in to help her. She says some of her really good
friends who were like aunts and uncles to her children are also part of
her support system.
She has also set up a GoFundMe
page for donations to honor her children's lives with a foundation.
"Our hearts are broken right now," she wrote on the page. "However, your
acts of kindness have given us some comfort to pull us through. We are
forever grateful to you all."
Dr.
Stephen Pustilnik, chief medical examiner for Fort Bend County,
confirmed Friday that the grandmother and her three grandchildren died
while trying to keep warm.
"The
family had a gas log fireplace and they were using that to keep warm,"
Pustilnik said. "They still had gas logs but not electricity, and
somehow the environmental conditions, I'm suspicious that a downdraft
happened through the chimney, and that caused the fire to extend beyond
the boundaries of the fire."
Millions
of people shivered in the cold with power outages and disrupted water
supply after winter storms slammed the state with extreme cold, snow and
ice earlier this month. President Joe Biden visited the state Friday to survey the damage.
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