A Gwinnett County woman escaped serious injury in a predawn fire Friday by jumping from the second-floor deck of her burning home.
Ruth Perez was asleep when the fire broke out in her home in the 1600 block of Black Hickory Place near Norcross.
Perez’s daughter, Vanessa Andrade, said her 47-year-old mother “smelled something burning and she checked the stove and she checked the fireplace and everything was OK.
“She went back to sleep since she saw everything normal,” Andrade said.
But when her mother awoke again, Andrade said the house was ablaze and “she didn’t have anywhere to come out from, so I guess she jumped out the the back.”
She said that her mother told her that 911 dispatchers had advised her to stay put until firefighters arrived, “but she said … she felt like she was going to die there.”
Despite jumping from the second floor, Perez told her daughter that other than a sore hand, she was fine.
Gwinnett fire Lt. Colin Rhoden said there were no other injuries in the fire. Rhoden said that arriving fire crews found “heavy fire and smoke coming from the home and actually breaching the roof.”
He said the fire heavily damaged the split-level home as well as a pickup truck parked in the driveway.
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