Largo veteran displaced after fire engulfs home: 'I have nothing'
LARGO, Fla. - A veteran is left with just the clothes on his back after a fire that reignited twice after the initial flames overnight destroyed his home early Wednesday morning.
Tim Reigelsperger woke up to the smell of smoke and a fire in the back of his home in Largo around midnight. Firefighters responded, and when they left, Reigelsperger said he slept in his car after having no luck finding a hotel room.
He woke up to his neighbor knocking on his car window, telling him his house was on fire again. This time, flames engulfed his home.
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"I smelled smoke," Reigelsperger’s neighbor Ramy Fahmy said.
Fahmy was walking home from the Lincolnshire Mobile Home Community’s clubhouse around 4 a.m. when he saw the flames and called 911.
"I'm usually not up at four in the morning," Fahmy said. "I got to bed early, which is something that I don't do, and got up early and went to the clubhouse to shoot some pool. So, I'm glad I was [up]," he said.
Reigelsperger and Fahmy banged on the windows and the doors of Reigelsperger’s neighbor’s home to wake them up as the flames spread.
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"He said, ‘you try to knock on the front door of the house. I’ll try to go from around the back and knock,’" Fahmy said. "But there was that explosion that happened and that got Pat up. She heard that and got out."
"Seeing them come out dazed and scared and shaking, it was hard," Fahmy said.
The fire damaged the Perline’s home and other neighbors’ homes, but no one was injured.
"This is replaceable, and it’s fixable," Pat Perline said. "Our lives aren’t."
"It's a disaster," Jim Perline said. "I wouldn't believe it happened to you. You know, you see other people, hurricanes rip their places down … When it [the fire] came back … we've got cracked windows and all this smell … But that second wave, that fire made it worse here."
Reigelsperger, who served three tours in Iraq and Afghanistan, lost everything in the fires. Wednesday, he searched through the ruble for his military dog tags.
"They’re sentimental. They got me through everything. It got me through three tours over there safe. I take them everywhere I travel, and you can’t replace them," Reigelsperger said.
Around noon Wednesday, the fire reignited again.
"Now, seeing a fire still in there for the third time makes me mad. I mean, I’m glad nobody got hurt," Reigelsperger said. "I don't have anything. I'm homeless. I don’t have clothes. I have nothing."
Firefighters responded and were on scene for about an hour. A spokesperson for Largo Fire Rescue said the cause of the fire is under investigation.