Family displaced by kitchen fire
Published on January 25th, 2008 - Nadine Parks of the Post and Courier

Blaze started after father, a sous chef at Sandpiper Village, fried fish.

A family of five in North Charleston was left homeless Monday night after fire ripped through a rental home near Azalea Drive.

Gregory Jenkins, 41, a sous chef at the Sandpiper Village retirement community in Mount Pleasant, was frying fish about 7:45 p.m. at his home on Aintree Avenue. He said he turned the burner off and went to a downstairs refrigerator.

"I came back, and all I heard was, phoof, and the fire went straight up to the ceiling," Jenkins said.

His wife, Jeanetta Jenkins, 45, who works at Chris' Dry Cleaning & Shirt Service on Coleman Boulevard, was watching television when she heard the commotion and realized the four-bedroom home was ablaze. Her first thought was for her mentally disabled brother in another part of the house, she said.

"We made sure he got out first," she said. "I lost all his medication in this."

Everyone in the home, including Jeanetta Jenkins' two children, a son and daughter, made it out safely.

Other than the medicine, she said she was most concerned about her 16-year-old son's basketball jersey. Michael Heyward is a power forward for the Burke High School team and has a game tonight against Hanahan High School.

"Things can be replaced, but not our lives," his mother said.

About 24 firefighters fought the fire and were not injured. The home is uninhabitable, North Charleston Fire Chief Leonard Judge said.

"It's extensive damage throughout the house," he said. Jeanetta Jenkins said the family had just moved in last month and did not have renter's insurance.

The Lowcountry Chapter of the America Red Cross was notified.

Sid Lederman, who owns the house and has rented it out for about the last seven years, said the wood structure was about 60 years old and is insured.