Minor Injuries in Openwood Plantation Fire

A kitchen fire on a quiet street in Vicksburg’s Openwood Plantation neighborhood remains under investigation.

A Culkin firefighter in the morning mist

Carol and Doug Kelley were preparing for their day when Carol smelled smoke. She had placed some bottles on the electric stovetop to boil just a moment before. She went to find the smoke and walked into a bundle of it. She screamed for her husband who was out back in their shed. That woke their baby. Carol grabbed the baby and climbed out of the bedroom window as her husband, Doug, was walking into the house to see why she was yelling for him.

“Why is she popping popcorn at this time of day?” Doug said he asked himself as he heard a loud popping sound. “She loves popcorn. I realize now that sound was the knotty pine around the kitchen cabinet.”

Doug immediately grabbed a water hose from the back porch. He couldn’t get any good pressure. A quick look found a leak in the hose. “I tied a rag around it, but it didn’t help much, so I came around to the side of the house and finally got this good hose hooked up,” he said.

Doug Kelley’s quick thinking and efforts saved his house from being a total loss.

“I imagine y’all probably got a good laugh at me and my little garden hose on the fire,” Doug said to firefighter Chuck Tate from The Culkin Volunteer Fire Department in Warren County, to which Tate immediately responded: “No, you kept that fire down and stopped it from spreading.”

A Culkin Firefighter pulls a hose as Chuck Tate looks on

Firefighter Lee Williams was the first firefighter on the scene. “I was just up the road when the call came in,” he said. Williams was there within a couple of minutes of the 911 call.

Culkin firefighters resting immediately after putting the fire out

As the house was being ventilated to clear out the toxic, lingering smoke, an ambulance pulled up to tend to a deep cut on Doug Kelley’s elbow. “I didn’t realize it was cut,” he said. “It must have happened when the side window busted.”

Doug Kelley getting his elbow attended.