Jackie Pham Nguyen and her three children, Olivia, 11, Edison, 8, and Colette, 5, affectionately known as Coco by her family, still held power and were happy to have more time with their Ba Ngoai, which means maternal grandmother in Vietnamese.
“We thought we were very lucky because we still had power until the early evening,” said Nguyen.
When their power went out a few hours later, the family squatted, lit the fireplace, and played board and card games, she said.
The kids tried to teach their grandmother some card games and the family was exhausted by 9:30 pm
“I put my kids to bed and the next thing I know I’m in the hospital,” Nguyen told CNN. “A few hours later the firefighter and the police officer came and said no one else had made it.”
The cause of the fire may never be known
Nguyen doesn’t quite remember what happened, she said, but remembers being on her first floor where her bedroom is and she couldn’t go upstairs to the children’s rooms. She was screaming for her children.
“I just stood there screaming and screaming and shouting their names, hoping they would get out of their rooms and actually jump over them so we could get out,” she said. “I just remember feeling like it was so dark and I can still hear everything crackling around me.”
Although Nguyen doesn’t remember much of the night, Doug Adolph, a Sugar Land city spokesman, told CNN that the mother of three “had to be physically restrained from running back in.”
He said it took an hour or more to fully control the fire. The fire brigade arrived on Tuesday around 2 a.m.
“The family had posted on social media that they were trying to keep warm by using a fireplace in the house,” Adolph said, adding that the cause of the fire has not yet been determined and may never be.
“We can’t say for sure that this was what caused the fire. We just don’t know yet,” he explained. “It is possible that the investigation will never identify an exact cause.”
Adolph said the neighborhood had been without power for at least eight hours.
While Nguyen suffered burns to her hands, she says the loss of her children and her mother is immeasurable.
“My heart is broken,” she said, pausing to catch her thoughts. “I’ll never be the same again.”
“I’m in this tactical crisis mode right now and I’m just really focused on all these latest arrangements because this is the last kind of thing I’m going to do for my kids,” Nguyen said.
‘Amazing Little People’
When Nguyen talks about her children, her stories about their great personalities come to life in small bodies.
“My kids were such phenomenal, wonderful little tough people,” she said of her three children.
Olivia and Coco are said to have celebrated back-to-back birthdays on March 27 and 28 next month. All three children attended St. Laurence Catholic.
“Colette is just a little firecracker and she has so much charisma,” said Nguyen. She too had that self-confidence as a five-year-old. She was never scared, totally impudent, not intimidated. ‘
Coco loved to dance and make TikTok videos. She loved Taylor Swift and Shawn Mendes and wanted to be a cheerleader and class president. She looked more like a teenager than a soon-to-be six-year-old, her mother said.
She was also very affectionate. “I knew she was my last child, but… she was just so clingy and I, you know, recorded that every minute I could have because I knew… those moments are so fleeting,” Said Nguyen.
Olivia had a sarcastic sense of humor that got drier when she entered high school.
‘She was a kid, but not. She was so grown up and so ahead of her peers, ”Nguyen said of her oldest.
She loved to ski and had been traveling with her mother every year since she was seven. Olivia and her mother baked cinnamon rolls for Santa every year, thinking he had plenty of cookies at the other houses and would remember their household for their treats.
The middle child and only boy, Edison, 8, was a “sweet boy” and an artist. He was extremely interested in modern art and architecture.
“He just had a very deep appreciation for every visual aesthetic,” said Nguyen. “So nice and so caring and so thoughtful … you wouldn’t think an eight-year-old had that depth.”
Edison was mildly autistic and very active, Nguyen told CNN, adding that he started running with his mother last year.
“You just spent a minute with him, you just knew how warm he was and everything came from a friendly place.”
The grandmother who gave everything
Their grandmother, Le, had always taken care of them, dropped them off and picked them up from school and activities, to help Nguyen achieve her professional goals in finance.
Le, a refugee from Vietnam, arrived in Kansas with nothing, and Nguyen thanks her mother for the sacrifice to give her a better life.
“My parents did everything for their children, as immigrants, and when they came to this country and after that, the love they gave me, it had increased tenfold when it came to the grandchildren,” said Nguyen.
She added, “I think Grandmas are unsung heroes and untold stories.”
Nguyen’s mother had never spent the night at her house, even during Hurricane Harvey in her own home. But, she said, “for some reason she decided to come by that day.”
‘I just feel like she was always rummaging around with the kids too, so maybe this was her last kind of thing, and you know, the kids’ ubering ‘to heaven,’ Nguyen said.
In honor of the children
Knowing those questions may never be answered, Nguyen said she would move forward in a way that honors her children and their memory appropriately.
“Obviously, I’m mourning losing them,” Nguyen told CNN. “But I feel like it is a truly tragic loss to the world that these children don’t enjoy living up to their potential and contributing to society in the way they could.”
“I want to do something permanent for them,” Nguyen said. “I really want to think about it because I want it to be lasting and meaningful … I owe it to everyone’s support and their intentions to not be rushed about how those resources are used.”