(CNN) – When the power went out at Loan Le’s house in the suburb of Sugar Land in Houston, Texas, he was driving to his daughter’s house about 5 miles away.
Jackie Pham Nguyen and her three children, Olivia, 11, Edison, 8, and Colette, 5, affectionately called Coco by her family, still had light and were happy to spend more time with their Ba Ngoai, meaning grandmother. Mothers in Vietnamese.
Power and water outages hit the state of Texas last week amid an unusual deep freeze that put many families like the Nguyens into survival mode.
“We thought we were very lucky because we still had energy until noon,” said Nguyen.
When the power went out a few hours later, the family settled in, lit the fireplace, and played board and card games, he said.
The kids tried to teach their grandmother some card games and the family got tired around 9:30 pm.
“I put my kids to bed and before I knew it I was in the hospital,” Nguyen told CNN. “A few hours later, the firefighter and police arrived and said no one else had been saved.”
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The cause of the fire may never be known
Nguyen doesn’t quite remember what happened, he said, but he remembers being on the first floor where his bedroom is and he couldn’t go to the children’s rooms. She was screaming for her children.
“I was standing there screaming and screaming and screaming their names, waiting for them to get out of their rooms and actually jump up so we could get out,” she said. ‘I just remember feeling like it was very dark and I could still hear everything around me creaking.
Coco, Edison and Olivia Nguyen were killed in the fire.
Although Nguyen said he doesn’t remember much about the night, Doug Adolph, a Sugar Land city spokesman, told CNN that the mother of three “had to be physically restrained from running back to the house.”
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 yet to be determined and may never be determined.
“We cannot say for sure that this was the cause of the fire. We just don’t know yet, ”he explained. “The investigation may never identify an exact cause.”
Adolph said the neighborhood had been without power for at least eight hours.
Although Nguyen has burned her hands, she says the loss of her children and her mother is immeasurable.
“My heart is broken,” he said, pausing to catch her thoughts. “I’ll never be the same.”
“I’m in this tactical crisis mode right now and I’m really focused on all these latest arrangements because this is the last thing I’m going to do for my kids,” said Nguyen.
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‘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, wonderful little people,” she said of her three children.
Olivia and Coco are said to have celebrated consecutive birthdays on March 27 and 28 next month. All three children attended St. Laurence Catholic.
“Colette is just a small missile ship and she has a lot of charisma,” Nguyen said. “She also had that self-confidence when she was 5 years old. She was never afraid, without complexes, she did not feel intimidated.
Coco loved to dance and shoot videos on TikTok. She loved Taylor Swift and Shawn Mendes, and she wanted to be the cheerleader and class president. She looked more like a teenager than a six-year-old girl, her mother said.
She was also very loving. “I knew she was my last child, but… she was so loving and I, you know, recorded every minute I could have because I knew… those moments are so fleeting,” Nguyen said.
Olivia Nguyen (right), 11, skiing with her mother, Jackie Nguyen.
Olivia had a sarcastic sense of humor that got drier when she entered high school.
It was a girl, but no. She was so grown up and so ahead of her peers, ”Nguyen said of the older woman.
He loved to ski, he traveled with his mother every year since he was 7 years old. Olivia and her mom baked cinnamon buns for Santa every year, thinking he’d have plenty of cookies in the other houses and remember home for his treats.
The middle son, Edison, 8, was a “sweet boy” and an artist. He was extremely interested in modern art and architecture.
“I just had a very deep appreciation for any visual aesthetic,” said Nguyen. “So nice, so loving and so thoughtful … You wouldn’t think an 8-year-old has such depth.”
Edison was mildly autistic and very active, Nguyen told CNN, adding that he started running with his mother last year.
“By spending a minute with him you knew how warm he was and that everything came from a friendly place.”
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The grandmother who gave everything
Their grandmother, Le, had always taken care of them, taking them to and from school and activities to help Nguyen achieve his career goals by working in the financial world.
Le, a refugee from Vietnam, came to Kansas with nothing, and Nguyen thanks her mother for sacrificing herself to give her a better life.
“My parents did everything for their children, as immigrants, and by coming to this country and then the love they gave me, it increased tenfold that in the grandchildren,” Nguyen said.
She added, “I think grandmothers are forgotten heroes and untold stories.”
Nguyen’s mother had never spent the night at her home, even during Hurricane Harvey. But, he said, “for some reason he decided to come that day.”
“I feel like she was always carrying the kids around too, so maybe this was her last thing, you know, ‘getting’ the kids to heaven,” Nguyen said.
Honoring children
Knowing those questions may never be answered, Nguyen said she would move forward in a way that properly honors her children and their memory.
“I’m clearly sorry I lost them,” Nguyen told CNN. “But I honestly think it is a tragic loss to the world that these children are unable to live up to their potential and contribute to society in the way they could have.”
One GoFundMe has already received more than $ 275,000 in donations. He said he wants to make sure the money is being used to build an organization or foundation.
“I want to do something permanent for them,” Nguyen said. “I really want to be considerate because I want it to be lasting and meaningful … I owe it to everyone’s support and their intentions not to rush how those resources are used.”