Staff Reporter

RESERVE – Neighbors and family of two young boys who perished in a horrific fire at a fourplex apartment in Reserve Saturday morning spent Monday afternoon trying to come to grips with what happened over the weekend.

“It has been impossibly hard on all of us,” said Harry Sanders, grandfather of 18-month-old Tremonte Campbell and 2-month-old Ke’miy Campbell, the boys who died in the blaze. “We’re really struggling to try and explain the whole thing to their older brother. He’s still asking for them.”

A makeshift memorial for two boys who perished in a Saturday morning fire in Reserve sits at the front gate of the fourplex where they lived. (Staff photo by Robin Shannon)

Sanders’ wife Lorraine explained that if the boys’ 3-year-old brother hadn’t been so alert, no one in the bottom floor apartment would have made it out alive.

“He really saved his mother’s life,” Lorraine Sanders said. “He was in her room and he did everything he could to wake her before other neighbors pounded on her door. She just scooped him up and ran out.”

Lorraine Sanders said that once the boys’ mother, 21-year-old Keisha Sanders had gotten her 3-year-old son to safety she tried to return to the apartment to get to the two other children. By that time, however, the smoke and flames had intensified too much and she could not maneuver the halls. The boys’ father, 23-year-old Troy Campbell, and a fourth son, a 7-year-old, were not present when the fire broke out.

Authorities with the state fire marshal’s office continued their investigation this week into what might have ignited the fire, but Investigations Division Supervisor Donald Carter said his office has yet to establish an opinion on an initial cause. He said interviews would continue into this week.

According to a report from the fire department, the fire began sometime around 11:30 a.m. Saturday in the 200 block of E. 30th Street in Reserve. Neighbors said by the time firefighters from Reserve and LaPlace arrived, the entire building was engulfed in flames.

“It all happened very fast,” said Dwight Horace, who lives directly across from the fourplex. “The smoke and the heat were extremely intense.”

Horace said that two other neighbors tried to get back into the building to try and rescue the toddlers before the roof and floor collapsed, but the fire was just too much.

“These guys were ex-Marines with training for this kind of thing,” Horace said. “So you know it was bad.”

After hours of searching through mounds of charred debris, firefighters and paramedics uncovered the badly burned bodies of the brothers around 4:20 p.m. Saturday. A few neighbors had heard that the brothers were found together, face down, one on top of the other.

“I kept them all together and took them along with me on errands,” said Harry Sanders. “All four of the boys were very close to each other.”

Horace said the fire has been a strain on the entire neighborhood, which is very tight-knit and friendly.

“All the kids wait on my porch for the bus to come to bring them to school,” said Horace. “This has been very trying for all of us because we all know each other very well.”

Lester Mitchell, the building’s owner, said all four units were occupied but he was not sure who else was home at the time of the fire. He said everyone living in the building was accounted for Saturday evening.

“All of the tenants were very close knit,” Mitchell said. “I couldn’t complain about anyone living in the building.

Chandrika Johnson, a tenant in the building who lived directly above Sanders’ apartment, said she was asleep in her bedroom when the fire broke out.

“I heard a commotion in the kitchen that got me up,” said Johnson. “That’s when I smelled the smoke and heard yelling about fire. I grabbed my two daughters and niece and ran out with only my night robe. It all happened very fast.”

A few tenants speculated that the source of the blaze might have been electrical since there have been a series of complaints about the old electric boxes in the 40-year-old building.