SPEEDWAY — A family on the west side is trying to figure out how to move forward after a fire destroyed almost everything they owned and forced them to move out of their home.
"It's still just not real to me. I just feel like I'm in a dream," Mark McCamon said. "You never think this would happen to you and now this is happening."
McCamon said he investigated the smell Thursday night at his house on Gerrard Avenue in Speedway, but he couldn't see any visual signs of a fire.
"I kept smelling something. It smelt like something was burning out of the register vents," he said.
When he walked outside, though, McCamon saw the smoke.
"I just heard a bunch of crackling and popping on the roof here," he said. "Smoke was pouring out of the roof. I ran in the house and yelled for my mother that there was a fire."
McCamon got his 74-year-old mother out of the house and called 911, and then he went upstairs.
"I saw fire coming up from the baseboards and tried to come down and get water and put it out, but it was too late," he said. "The fire had been smoldering in the walls and in the ceiling for quite a while, I guess."
Firefighters put the fire out, but the home will need extensive repairs that could take three months.
"I wasn't able to save hardly anything, but what we do, I don't even know where we're gonna put that right now until we can come back in the home," McCamon said.
McCamon and his mother rent the home, but he said he was in the process of buying it from the owner.
"Unfortunately, I didn't have renters insurance because I assumed that I would have mortgage insurance after this was done," he said.
That means he won't be able to recoup anything that was lost.
"It's gonna be a slow process trying to get that back together," McCamon said. "Hopefully, I can do that before mother actually gets to come back and make it home again."
McCamon said his mother is battling dementia and it's difficult for her because she doesn't understand why she can't come home.
"Finding somewhere to stay is tough, too, at this time," he said. "Wondering what we're going to do there and trying to get mother to be taken care of."
One of McCamon's friends started a GoFundMe page to try to help him turn things around.
"Please pray for us so we can get better and get back to normal on this," he said.
Click here to go to the GoFundMe page for McCamon and his mother.
