Ruth Benjaminson’s family is in mourning this Easter weekend, after a fire that swept through her mobile home in Jordan.
“I think we’re handling everything the best we can,” says Cozette Linton, Benjaminson’s granddaughter. “We’ve just really come together as family. It’s just brought us closer right now.”
Neighbors say the fire, at the Valley Green Mobile Home Park, off Highway 169, erupted without warning.
Marvin Aguirre woke up around 3:30 Wednesday morning to see the blaze outside his sister’s home.
“I looked outside her window, and I just see big flames,” he recalled.
Aguirre says he tried to help but was beaten back by the flames — and told by a police officer it was too dangerous to enter.
“I was like, can I got in there, and he was telling me not to go in there, ‘cos of stuff, and the fire department was nearby,” he says.“It’s kind of heartbreaking, seeing somebody just pass away in a fire.”
The fire took two lives.
Benjaminson, 67, was a mother and grandmother.
Her daughter, 36-year-old Callie Noltee, also lost her life.
“It’s really hard,” declared Mary Lavrenz, Benjaminson’s daughter. “We’re all hurting.”
Fire crews were initially alerted by a 911 call.
One dispatcher updating firefighters, “Our original caller was an occupant of the trailer on fire, she may be back inside the trailer.”
Family members believe Benjaminson woke up, ran outside, and then went back in to get her ex-husband, 72-year-old Patrick Kehoe, and pulled him to safety.
Then, realizing Noltee, her daughter was still inside, she went in for a second time — to try to rescue her and the family’s three dogs.
“Very heroic action,” Linton says quietly. “When I found that out, it broke my heart just to know she sacrificed herself to try to help other people in that moment.”
Neither woman emerged.
Noltee was pronounced dead at the scene, and Benjaminson died at the hospital.
“The type of person she was, she couldn’t leave them in the house,” Lavrenz says. “So, she went back in, and I feel she went and pulled my dad out to get him out and tried to go get my sister.”
But the family is also counting its blessings.
Kehoe was released from HCMC on Friday after he was treated for minor burns and smoke inhalation.
Benjaminson’s son, 27-year-old Quinten Wicklund, who also lived in the mobile home, was away when the fire broke out.
Still — it’s a difficult time for the family.
“What we’ve said is that my grandma didn’t want to leave us alone,” Linton says. “She wanted somebody to be back with us. Somebody who loved us and cares.”
Family members say Benjaminson was deaf, as is Kehoe.
They believe that may have been a factor in their not realizing their home was on fire.
Their three dogs died in the fire.
Authorities have not yet released an official cause of the blaze.
“We’re just trying to be together as a family and help each other through this,” Lavrenz says.
The family has set up a crowdfunding effort to help with the funeral and other expenses. A link to the GoFundMe can be found HERE.
