My Friends Heartbreaking Loss

East Ridge Couple's House Goes Up In Flames

February 14, 2008 - 4:22PM

After pouring their hearts, wallets and sweat into their home an East Ridge couple looses it all to fire. It happened as Gina and Gary Brumlow were leaving town for a Valentine's Day trip to the North Carolina Mountains. Gary Brumlow bought the house on Burns Road in East Ridge almost 25 years ago for $9,000. A few years later he married Gina, and during the last 20 years they replaced virtually everything inside and out. East Ridge firefighters spent Thursday afternoon dousing the hot spots from a fire that started just after 11:00 a.m. The Brumlow's had left about a half-hour earlier, and got a call from a sister-in-law who lives nearby saying their home was on fire. "So when we pull up, this is what it is," Gina Brumlow said. She explained how she and her husband were at a nearby bank, getting money for a trip to North Carolina. Investigators don't know yet what started the fire, but it spread quickly through the house. East Ridge Public Safety spokesman Eric Hopkins said "fire crews arrived on the scene within five minutes to find the house with visible flames coming from the house." It didn't take long to contain the fire, but most everything inside the Brumlow's house is damaged or destroyed. The one important item that's in-tact is the couple's safe, which had important papers and family items inside that can not be replaced. Recently the Brumlow's spent thousands of dollars to re-do their bathrooms and other spaces inside. "And I just got that new living room suit," Brumlow sighed. But Brumlow is most thankful they were not at home at the time, because her husband has a fractured foot and can not move around very much at all. "Thank God, you know, we're alive and Gary wasn't laying in that bed," brumlow said. While investigators try to figure out what started the fire, the Brumlows will stay with family while their insurance company takes care of the rest.