An Alabama driver’s unintended, GPS-directed detour in Georgia positioned him to help save a couple and a dozen children in their care from a fire that enveloped their home while they slept recently, according to the family and their rescuer. As he recounted in an interview with television station WRCB that quickly went viral among internet circles dedicated to uplifting news stories, James Burke had fallen asleep in his recliner while his wife, 12 adopted children and one grandchild slept in their beds on the night of 17 October in the community of Lyerly, Georgia. Burke said he only woke up because he felt the presence of a man whom he did not know in his living room telling him: “Hey, you’ve got to get out of here.
Your house is on fire.” That man – Casey Sparks, 37, of Concorde, Alabama – then worked with Burke to get his wife, Larita, and all 12 children out of the burning home. Sparks also helped firefighters get to the scene, as Burke put it to WRCB. Sparks on Monday told the Guardian that he and his 13-year-old son were driving back home from a softball tournament in Dalton, Georgia – about 40 miles north-east of Lyerly – when his GPS kept sending him to Burke’s community even though they had gone through nearby Chattanooga, Tennessee, on the way to the competition.
He pulled over outside the home; instructed his son, Cason, to stay in their truck and call for emergency help; and ran up to a side door alongside another passerby who had stopped upon seeing the flames. That door, Sparks later learned, had a lock which had previously been broken and was left unrepaired. Sparks went through that door after he encountered a teen who, in an evident panic, had grabbed a hose pot to try to put the fire out.
That teen said other people were in the home, prompting Sparks to go in while the other passerby stayed with Cason. Sparks then found Burke and woke him up. He soon carried out the Burkes’ granddaughter, whom Karle described as blind and age 10.
Then, instead of waiting for first responders, Sparks ran back inside, escorted Larita Burke to safety, and did the same “with many more children” – including some who had disabilities or special needs, as Karle reported. The blaze ultimately caused the Burkes’ house to collapse, and it consumed their three vehicles, Karle wrote. Nonetheless, no one was physically hurt.
Sparks said his only comment in reply was: “Me neither.” Sparks on Monday said he firmly believed divine intervention placed him where he needed to be on the night of the fire at the Burkes’ home. The Burkes told WRCB it was difficult to grasp how they had lost their belongings in a fire, whose cause had not been immediately determined. Yet the couple – who said they had fostered more than 500 children at their home during the 15 years preceding the fire – said their spirits were boosted by community members who rallied around them in the aftermath of the disaster.
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