Fire Guts High Point Home

Duane Brown planned to take advantage of Thursday's beautiful weather and fix the gutters on his house.

But he was just setting the ladder on the eaves around 3 p.m. when he was distracted by the smell of smoke. Brown followed the thin gray line of smoke hovering in the air to nearby 12100 Sara St., where a woman was standing in the driveway, looking at the flames in her house.

"She didn't know what to do," Brown said.

From his standpoint on the driveway, Brown could see flames had completely consumed the living room. Windows shattered as the fire spread. Half a dozen explosions rocked the High Point neighborhood, presumably as oxygen canisters caught fire.

As Brown and others helped the woman across the street to her neighbor's house, fire engines from the High Point Fire Department pulled up, followed by Hernando County Fire Rescue ambulances.

Yellow hoses snaked across the grass and doused the flames, leaving behind a gutted ruin and a charred car that was parked in the carport. What looked like a short blackened Christmas tree stood like a sentinel on the sidewalk.

Fire officials on the scene said a candle appeared to be the cause of the blaze.