A Wilmer couple and their five adopted children made it out safely after an early-morning fire tore through their home and destroyed it just weeks after they finished building it.
Nancy McDowell, 67, said she woke around 2 a.m. to what she initially thought was her son making coffee, part of the family’s usual morning routine. When her husband, Drew McDowell, 68, called out and got no answer, the couple realized the sound they were hearing was actually the home’s fire alarm. Smoke was already billowing from a room above their bedroom on Wilmer Road.
The couple fled with their five adopted children, several dogs, two cats and a litter of puppies, escaping with little more than the clothes they were wearing. Firefighters from the Wilmer, Tanner Williams, Semmes and Georgetown volunteer fire departments spent hours battling the blaze. Authorities did not release a cause for the fire.
“It’s devastating but it’s not the end of the world,” Nancy McDowell said afterward, adding that she was grateful no one was hurt. One of the couple’s adult sons, Jacob McDowell, a firefighter in Adel, Georgia, who was adopted by the McDowells as an infant, drove through the night after learning about the fire from missed calls. He was allowed to enter the damaged home to retrieve a collection of heirloom guns passed down through his father’s family, which the family said were the only significant items recovered from the house.
One firefighter, Wilmer Volunteer Fire Department Chief Mike Cooper, was injured when part of a collapsing wall struck him during the response. Nancy McDowell said he appeared to suffer only minor injuries. Family members described the loss as sudden and disorienting, noting that the home had only recently been finished. “It was like, shock… a reminder you shouldn’t take things for granted,” said 17-year-old Alex McDowell, one of the couple’s children.
Neighbors and relatives rallied around the family in the fire’s aftermath, with the McDowells’ son living next door offering a place to stay as they began sorting through what could be salvaged from the wreckage and planning next steps for rebuilding.