Doraville dispatcher loses home to fire

As a dispatcher for the Doraville Police Department, Lisa Guardardo is used to fielding calls from citizens in distress. But little did she know the one she would receive Wednesday night would be from her own family.

Guardardo’s husband called around 11 p.m. Wednesday to inform her that their house was on fire.

“My husband called and I hung up on him,” she said. “I told him, ‘I’m at work; I don’t have time to talk to you.’”

He called me back, and this time he got her attention.

“He’s from Honduras and when he’s excited he starts speaking Spanish. He was saying ‘emergencia, emergencia! The house is on fire.’”

By the time the Gwinnett County Fire Department arrived —barely six minutes later — the home was fully involved.

“They lost pretty much everything,” Captain Thomas Rutledge of the Gwinnett County Fire Department said. “The house was gutted completely by the fire. There’s a shell left standing but everything inside is gone.”

Even though she knew her family was in danger —she and her husband have two children — Guardardo could not leave her post until she could be relieved. “It wasn’t like I could jump up and leave,” she said. “I was hoping maybe it was something small and they’d be able to put it out.”

One of the other dispatchers called to check on it and she said, ‘No, it’s for real. You’ve got to get out of here.’

Once off duty she went to the scene. By the time she got to the scene her family was standing in the yard in their underwear and the house was completely engulfed in flames.

“It’s a total loss,” she said. “Everything.”

Nevertheless, Guardardo said she intended to work her normal 6 p.m. shift Thursday night, taking off only the first two hours as comp time.

“But my captain said not to come in. He said to pull myself together and take care of things.”

“She’s like all of us in public safety. She has a job to do helping others,” said Rutledge, who was also on the scene. “She knows they’re fortunate nobody got hurt.”

Rutledge said the fire has been ruled accidental and appears to be “electrical in nature.”

“They have an 11- or 12-year-old boy and he heard a popping sound in one of the bedrooms,” Rutledge said of the older, 1,200- square-foot, wood-frame home on the 6200 block of Jane Drive. “He and his father went to the room and discovered it on fire. They tried to put it out with a fire extinguisher and a garden hose but were unsuccessful. It was probably already spreading in the walls and ceiling by then. They were lucky to get out.”

As of Thursday afternoon the Guardardos had nowhere to stay, but Allstate Insurance is confident that an “an apartment or something” can be found for the family before nightfall. The plan is to rebuild a new house on the site. The Red Cross is also assisting the family.

“I’m just thankful everybody is safe,” she said.