Community helps woman who survived house fire “If it weren’t for my son, I might not have made it out.”

Co-workers and the community are coming together to try and help a Houston County woman get back on her feet after she lost nearly everything she owned, including her beloved pets, late last month.

The date, January 23, 2022, will always be remembered as a frightening one for Paula Hill and her son, Dallas Carter. It was in the wee hours of that morning that fire ripped through their Elko home on Grovania Road. At just after 3:00 a.m., it was still dark on the outside, and when Hill recalled the chaotic event, the fear could still be heard in her voice.

“I was asleep, and I kept smelling something, but I didn’t get up,” she said. “It didn’t smell like fire; I didn’t know what it was.”

As she continued to lie in her bed, still half-asleep, Hill said she suddenly heard the sound of breaking glass. That brought her into a sitting position, but she still didn’t think her life was in danger.

“At first I thought it had something to do with my dogs. They slept in the living room, and if you were coming, they would never move out of your way,” Hill explained.

Because she knew how her dogs were, her immediate assumption was that her adult son, had gotten up and was headed to the kitchen for some water, and because the dogs didn’t move, she figured he tripped over one of them causing something to break.

“I decided to get up and go check on it,” she said, “but when I opened my bedroom door, heat and smoke hit me in the face.”

Hill scurried to shut the door, and then she rushed back into her bedroom to find her cell phone, thinking that the flashlight feature on her phone might help her see how to get out. She had the presence of mind to grab her purse and some necessary medications before walking back to her door, all the while, screaming for her son.

“I could hear him yelling back. He was yelling for me too,” she recalled. “He was actually trying to come get me. He yelled for me to come to his room and climb out through the window. That’s what I did. That’s how we got out.”

Carter had awakened before his mother, and Hill was glad that he had. Her son’s room had a window that could be opened and used as an escape route.

“My room only had one window; in the bathroom,” she described. “It wss a picture window and couldn’t be opened. If it weren’t for my son, I might not have made it out.”

In the aftermath, Hill said the fire didn’t awaken her son, a troubled dream did.

“He told me that he’d had a nightmare, and it woke him up,” she shared. “He didn’t know what was going on until he opened his bedroom door.”

Almost everything they owned was either grossly damaged by smoke or totally destroyed in the fire that left their home a total loss. Hill owned the home and had been living in it for more than 30 years. However, she had no fire insurance to get anything replaced.

“Right now, I’m having to stay with my mom in Perry, and my son is staying with a friend that lives off Sardis Church Road,” Hill told The Journal.

In an effort to help, a co-worker of Hill’s started a GoFundMe and is soliciting the community to chip in and assist Hill get back to a place of independence. Hill is grateful, and said that financial assistance is what they need most of all.

“That’s what’s going to help us get a new place to stay,” she pointed out. “That’s the most important thing right now; that we get another home to live in.”

To donate to the cause, the public is urged to go to https://www.gofundme.com/f/pull-together-for-paula. At this page, donations can be made. The goal set is $10,000, and generous people have already begun to give.

For those who would like to mail a check or money order, please make it payable to Paula Hill and send to 1314 Georgia Avenue, Perry, GA 31069.

Clothing donations are also appreciated. Sizes for Hill are: 12-14 pants, large shirts and sizes 7 ½ to 8 in shoes. For her son, Dallas Carter, the sizes are: 32/32 in pants, large shirts and 10 ½ in shoes.

The cause of the house fire is still unknown at this time. Hill said that some believe it may have started in her attic while others have told her that it may have ignited in the area where the power came into the home.

“We haven’t heard anything official from the fire marshal yet, so we don’t know,” she said.

If she could do one thing differently, it would be to have a smoke detector installed. “I know a lot of people don’t like them because they do go off when the batteries get low,” she said. “But if we’d had one, our house might not have been a total loss, we could have gotten out sooner and maybe, our dogs wouldn’t have died.”

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