Liberty student recounts rescue from burning duplex

It wasn’t the smell of smoke that awoke 19-year-old Tracy Palmer shortly after noon on Sunday.

It was a scream.

“At first I was just like, ‘Who is yelling in the backyard?’” said the Liberty University sophomore on Monday, recalling her harrowing escape from a house fire the day before.

She looked through cracks in the blinds and saw her neighbors, trying to get her attention.

Tracy knew something was wrong.

“I pulled my window open, and I was like, “Is my house on fire?’”

They told her it was — and to get out, now.

“I kind of panicked but I didn’t freeze up,” Tracy said.

She ran out of her second-floor room and yelled for her older sister. “Jacquie! Jacquie! Where are you?”

No answer.

Then she saw smoke billowing up the staircase.

Tracy grabbed her cell phone. Dialed 911. Ran back into her room. Closed the door. And screamed for help.

“Once I saw that smoke coming up the stairs, I didn’t want to look back,” she said. “The fire was downstairs. So the only way out was through my window.

“I just wanted to get out. I didn’t want to be alone in there.”

As she considered jumping, another neighbor, Austin Toft, yelled up to her that help was on the way.

Firefighters with the Lynchburg Fire Department were quick to arrive. They hoisted up a ladder and helped Tracy to safety.

Lynchburg Fire Battalion Chief Ed Jones said Sunday the rescue came just in time.

“We only had a few more minutes there to get her,” he said.

Three others who lived on the other side of the duplex already had escaped.

In a different part of town, Tracy’s sister Jacquie was working when a friend called and told her the house was burning. She thought it was a prank.

“Everyone sounded so calm,” Jacquie said.

She left work early and “just couldn’t believe it” when she saw what was left of the apartment on Watergate Drive, which is off Wards Ferry Road near Heritage High School.

“There’s so much water damage that the ceiling is coming down,” said Jacquie, 22, a Liberty senior.

The sisters, originally from Idaho, are close.

“Best friends,” Jacquie said. They moved in to the duplex together in December so they could watch over each other.

Until a couple weeks ago, Jacquie had worked two jobs so she could furnish the apartment.

“It’s all gone,” she said Monday. “All my work and time.”

Furniture, clothes, jewelry, schoolwork, a laptop — all destroyed in the fire.

The Red Cross provided a hotel room Sunday and Monday night. The sisters plan to move what little they have left into a new apartment today. They also are hopeful that their parents’ homeowner’s insurance will replace what the fire consumed.

“It’s upsetting, but life goes on,” Jacquie said Monday. “One day at a time. Today was a better day than yesterday, that’s for sure.”

“I’m just thankful that she is OK.”

Tracy said that she, too, is “excited to be alive.”

“I just realized that I could die at any moment. My life could have just been gone,” she said.

“God sent his angels for me.”