‘I had to,’ says woman who ran into burning Fort Worth apartment complex to save cat
Jazmin Buford made it outside of the burning apartment complex consumed in blowing dark smoke when she realized her cat, Sophia, was still inside.
She cried as she frantically asked the Fort Worth firefighters if they could go to her family’s apartment to retrieve the cat, or if she could go back herself. They told her no — it wasn’t safe. The fire, aided by strong gusts of wind, was growing fast.
Buford, 20, went anyway. “I had to,” she said.
Leaving behind her mother, sister and 2-year-old niece safely across the street, she re-entered the building on Wednesday afternoon when no one was looking, moving through a solid wall of smoke that made it nearly impossible to see. But she knew how to get to their two-level apartment in roughly the center of the building, next to the unit where the fire started.
When she reached their place, she couldn’t see her cat anywhere and began screaming her name over and over again. She then went to check one of her familiar hiding spots underneath the television stand in her mother’s room, and there she was.
Sophia bolted across the room, wanting to sneak underneath the bed. But Buford scooped her up.
“She was so scared. She was shaking,” she recalled. “I just ran back downstairs, and I couldn’t see anything — no I couldn’t. But I got back out.”
There were no reported injuries in the fire.
Buford sat outside of the complex on Cherbourg Drive in east Fort Worth for more than an hour as more than 60 firefighters battled the three-alarm blaze. Her older sister, Meaghan Jackson, 24, kept Sophia warm inside of her furry jacket. Her mother, Marilyn Cole, swaddled Jackson’s baby girl in a blanket.
They didn’t yet know where they would be staying Wednesday night, or when they could return to their apartment. Mike Drivdahl, a Fort Worth Fire Department spokesman, said the fire affected about 12 units and left 24 adults and nine children displaced. Management at the apartment complex, he said, would help people get set up in vacant units.
Cole, watching smoke rise from her family’s home of two and a half years, was in shock.
“Our apartment is definitely smoky — it’s bad. I can already say that,” she said. “But I’m just grateful my babies are OK. Sophia’s OK. My granddaughter — we’re OK.”
The three-alarm fire was among the largest Fort Worth firefighters have battled this year, spreading fast amid the windy conditions and sending gray smoke high into the air.
The cause of the fire is under investigation, Drivdahl said.
Firefighters responded a little before 4 p.m. to the 1700 block of Cherbourg Drive, he said, and found heavy fire that began between the ceiling of the first level and the floor of the second level. They elevated the blaze to a second-alarm and then a third-alarm, bringing more help to the scene, he said. A total of about 80 firefighters with 18 firetrucks responded.
The blaze spread upward to the attic but, within an hour and a half on the scene, firefighters had it under control.
Buford not only went in the building to get her cat on Wednesday — she said she went in a second time to grab her mother’s purse, which had her wallet inside. She and her family had left the home in a hurry after a neighbor knocked on their door to tell them about the smoke.
She had been watching “Frozen” with her sister and her niece. Cole, who works nights, had been asleep.
They were all feeling thankful on Wednesday they were safe, even if they might have a long road ahead.
And Buford, who has had two previous cats who have died, was happy she had Sophia.
“Like I kept saying, ‘Now what if I just never went back inside and got her?’ That’s all I kept saying,” she said. “She wouldn’t be here.”
This story was originally published February 26, 2020 at 5:00 PM.
