Two young girls, aged two and seven, lost their lives in a house fire which was sparked by a Christmas tree in Barstow, California. The incident occurred on December 14, 2023.
Firefighters responded to the emergency call just before 7 p.m., facing the challenging task of rescuing the children trapped inside the burning house.
Charmon and Akeem Isom, the parents of the girls, made desperate attempts to save their family, with Charmon sustaining first-degree burns in the process.
Despite the quick response from the Barstow Fire Protection District, who gained quick access to the girls by jumping through two separate bedroom windows, the efforts to save the girls proved futile.
The family lost Aalijah Isom, 2, shortly after the incident. Annie Isom, 7, was airlifted to a specialized burn center and placed on life support. After a week-long battle for her life, her parents made the decision to let her go. Annie’s organs were donated following her death.
A vigil for the Isom sisters was held on Saturday, December 23, where their father remarked, “There’s no amount of money, there’s no amount of valuables that can bring back my children.”
The tragedy has brought attention to the potential dangers posed by Christmas trees in homes. The Los Angeles Fire Department maintains a website dedicated to highlighting these risks and offering safety tips. The site warns, “It can take seven years to grow a Christmas tree … and seven seconds for it to become an inferno.”
Fire safety experts stress the importance of taking preventive measures with Christmas trees. They advise ensuring live trees have a fresh cut for better water absorption, daily watering, using safety-approved lights, keeping the tree away from heat sources, and having working smoke alarms and a fire evacuation plan in place.
It is believed that the smoke detectors in the home were not functioning at the time of the fire.