Marcia Chambers Photo.
A 54-year-old woman returned to her Short Beach home on Memorial Day weekend to find it engulfed in flames, the result, fire officials said, of careless smoking. The woman became distraught and was taken to a local hospital for treatment and counseling, officials said.
Initially fire officials thought that the woman, later identified as Elizabeth Bailey, was inside her home. Neighbors told fire officials they thought she might be. They searched but did not find her. When Bailey later returned to her home with a friend to find her house in flames, fire officials told her the house had been declared uninhabitable and she could no longer live there. Bailey’s mother, Barbara Bailey, owns the home at 15 HIghland Ave., but is now living with another daughter in another state.
The two-story house sustained intense smoke and heat damage making it uninhabitable, Fire Marshall Shaun Heffernan told the Eagle. The house was virtually gutted, Heffernan said. He also said that firefighters were hampered by a large accumulation of possessions found inside.
The fire erupted on a warm summer day in this close-knit beach community where houses are built close to each other. The possibility the fire could spread to nearby homes, where many neighbors were holding their traditional Memorial Day cook-out, was of deep concern to fire officials, they said.
The flames erupted in the living room of the house, which is surrounding by tall trees and is located at 15 Highland Avenue. It started at about 4:30 p.m. A neighbor saw smoke pouring from the windows and alerted police and fire officials. Firefighters quickly put out the fire, they said. It was contained to the living room but caused damage throughout the house.
Four fire companies, including the volunteer fire fighters from Co. No. 4 in Short Beach, quickly responded to the fire. Afterward, the windows and doors on the two-story house were boarded up.
Elizabeth Bailey came to Short Beach from England about two years ago. In recent weeks she was often seen at the beach, smoking and talking about her missing dog. Following an accident, her driver’s license had been suspended, court records show.
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