Furniture Shopper Discovers House Fire

COLUMBUS, Miss. (WCBI) — A Lowndes County furniture shopper may have saved a Columbus home from burning down.

Charlene Wallace, a cafeteria worker at Caledonia schools, stopped at a home on King Street to buy a bed for her grandchildren when she noticed smoke coming from the house next door.

Seeing a child’s bike on the front porch and a car in the yard, she feared people may be asleep inside. Unable to get anyone to the door, she forced the front door open, which provided air to the fire, blowing out a bedroom window.

Curtistine Cotton wasn’t at home at the time but arrived a short time later. Wallace tried to console her as the watched firemen clean up the smoke, water and fire damage.