Three children and their grandmother died in a house fire last week near Houston, during a power outage while the historic cold swept through Texas, according to local officials.
Firefighters arrived at Jackie Pham Nguyen’s house shortly after receiving an emergency call at about 2 am on February 16, according to Doug Adolph, a spokesman for the city of Sugar Land.
The structure was already “enveloped” by the flames, Adolph said, with Nguyen out of the house. Nguyen, the mother of three, “had to be physically prevented from returning to her burning home,” said Adolph.
After putting out the fire, firefighters found the bodies of three children and their grandmother.
Adolph said the neighborhood had been without electricity for hours and that the family posted on social media that they were lighting the fireplace to keep warm in the dark.
However, Adolph warned that the investigation is ongoing. “We have not yet identified the cause of the fire and it is possible that we will never do it,” he said.
In an interview with CNN, Nguyen recalled his children, Olivia, 11, Edison, 8, and Colette, 5, as “phenomenal, incredible, tough humans” and his mother as a refugee from Vietnam who arrived in Kansas with nothing, he sacrificed a lot for his children and whose love was “ten times greater when it came to grandchildren”.
Jackie Pham Nguyen did not immediately respond to a request for comment from NBC News, nor did Nathan Nguyen, the children’s father.
The double pages of online crowdfunding, hosted by both parents and verified by GoFundMe, remind children of “eternal sources of light and wonder” and “angels” with “fun and sassy attitudes”.
Together, the pages raised hundreds of thousands of dollars on Friday night.
In a statement on the fundraising page, Jackie Pham Nguyen thanked donors for their support, saying that ideally “we would love to honor Olivia, Edison and Colette with a lasting foundation of some kind.”
“Our hearts are broken now,” wrote Nguyen. “However, your acts of kindness have given us some comfort in helping us. We are forever grateful to all of you.”
