FOUR ESCAPE BURNING CAPE HOME

Deanna Howard isn't sure why she awoke from a sound sleep Tuesday morning. But when she checked on the two children at her home, she found the living room filled with smoke and saw flames shooting from her son's bed.

"I woke up, smelled the smoke and said we've got to get the kids out of here," said Howard as she watched firefighters pump water into her home at 200 Mason St.

She and her boyfriend were asleep when the fire broke out. Her 3-year-old son and her boyfriend's 1-year-old daughter were in the house. All four escaped.

"My house is just messed up," she said. "But that's the main thing: We saved the babies."

"They were very fortunate," said Cape Girardeau Fire Marshal Tom Hinkebein.

Firefighters responded just before 10 a.m.

He said the 3-year-old child said he had placed a pillow into a standing gas furnace and the pillow caught fire. The child threw the pillow onto his bed, and flames quickly spread.

The frame house didn't have any smoke detectors, Hinkebein said.

"This is one of the luckiest women," he said. "She just woke up at the right moment."

An open-flame fire burns very quickly, Hinkebein said.

Howard said she tried to use her telephone to call for help, but it was dead. The flames already had burned through the wires.

Instead, the two adults and two children went next door to Reed's gas station to call the fire department.

Hinkebein said flames heavily damaged the bedroom, and the rest of the house had heavy smoke damage. Howard was renting the house from her grandfather.

"The ceiling had to come out because the fire was up there," he explained. "By the time we got there all the furniture in the bedroom was on fire, and the two beds and mattresses were gone already."