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Jackie Pham Nguyen and her three children, Olivia, 11, Edison, 8, and Colette, 5, affectionately known as Coco by her family, still had the power and were happy to spend more time with their Ba Ngoai, which means maternal grandmother in Vietnamese.
“We thought we were really lucky because we still had power until the early evening,” Nguyen said.
When their power went out a few hours later, the family crouched down, lit the fireplace and played board and card games, she said.
The children tried to teach their grandmother to play card games and the family got tired around 9:30 p.m.
“I put my kids to bed and really the next thing I know I’m in the hospital,” Nguyen told CNN. “A few hours later the firefighter and the policeman came and said no one else had succeeded.”
The cause of the fire may never be known
Nguyen doesn’t fully remember what happened, she said, but remembers being on the first floor where her bedroom is and not being able to go up to the children’s rooms. She cried for her children.
“I was just standing there screaming and screaming and shouting their names hoping they would come out of their rooms and jump so we could get out,” she said. “I just remember feeling like it was so dark and I can still hear everything crackling around me.”
While Nguyen doesn’t remember much else from the night, Doug Adolph, a spokesperson for the town of Sugar Land, told CNN that the mother of three “must be physically prevented from entering the city. House”.
He said it took an hour or more to bring the fire completely under control. Firefighters arrived around 2 a.m. on Tuesday.
“The family had posted on social media that they were trying to stay warm by using a fireplace inside the house,” Adolph said, adding that the cause of the blaze had not yet been determined and might never be.
“We can’t say for sure that was the cause of the fire. We just don’t know yet,” he said. “The investigation may never identify an exact cause.”
Adolph said the neighborhood had been without power for at least eight hours.
While Nguyen suffered burns to her hands, she says the loss of her children and mother is immeasurable.
“My heart is broken,” she said, stopping to resume her thoughts. “I’ll never be the same.”
“I’m in this tactical crisis mode now and I’m just really focused on all of these final arrangements because it’s the last kind of thing I’m going to do for my kids,” Nguyen said.
“ Amazing little humans ”
When Nguyen talks about his children, his stories about their big personalities in small bodies come to life.
“My children were phenomenal, amazing, wicked little humans,” she said of her three children.
Olivia and Coco are said to have celebrated back-to-back birthdays next month on March 27-28. All three children attended St. Laurence Catholic.
“Colette is just a little firecracker and she has so much charisma,” Nguyen said. “She too, at five, had that level of confidence. She was never afraid, totally without excuse, not intimidated.”
Coco loved dancing and making TikTok videos. She loved Taylor Swift and Shawn Mendes and wanted to be a cheerleader and class president. She looked more like a teenager than a six-year-old girl, her mother said.
She was also very affectionate. “I knew she was my last daughter but … she was so loving and I, you know, I took that every minute I could get it because I knew … those moments are so fleeting , ”Nguyen said.
Olivia had a sarcastic sense of humor that dried up on entering middle school.
“She was a child, but not. She was so mature and so far ahead of her peers,” Nguyen said of her oldest child.
She loved to ski, going on trips with her mom every year since she was seven. Olivia and her mom would bake cinnamon buns for Santa every year, with the idea that he had enough cookies in other homes and would remember their household because of their treats.
The middle child and only boy, Edison, 8, was a “nice boy” and an artist. He was extremely interested in modern art and architecture.
“He just had a very deep appreciation for any visual aesthetic,” Nguyen said. “So kind and so caring and caring … you wouldn’t think an eight-year-old had this level of depth.”
Edison was mildly autistic and very active, Nguyen told CNN, adding that he started running with his mother last year.
“You just spent a minute with him, you knew how warm he was and that everything came from a friendly place.
The grandmother who gave everything
Their grandmother, Le, had always taken care of them, dropping them off and picking them up from school and activities, to help Nguyen achieve his professional goals while working in finance.
A refugee from Vietnam, Le arrived in Kansas with nothing, and Nguyen thanks her mother for sacrificing herself to give her a better life.
“My parents did everything for their children, like, as immigrants, and coming to this country and then this love that they gave me was ten times more when it came to the little ones -children, ”Nguyen said.
She added: “I think grandmothers are unsung heroes and unknown stories.”
Nguyen’s mother had never spent the night at home, even riding Hurricane Harvey in her own home. But, she said, “for some reason that day she decided to come.”
“I just feel like she was always dragging the kids too, so maybe that was her last kind of thing, and you know, ‘getting’ the kids up to heaven,” Nguyen said.
Honor the children
Knowing that these questions may never be answered, Nguyen said she would move forward in a way that appropriately honors her children and their memory.
“Obviously, I am crying that I lost them,” Nguyen told CNN. “But I think it’s honestly a tragic loss to the world that these children don’t appreciate living up to their potential and contributing to society in the way they could have.”
“I want to do something sustainable for them,” Nguyen said. “I really want to think about it because I want it to be sustainable and meaningful … I owe it to everyone’s support and their intentions not to be hasty about how these resources are used.”
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