YOUNGSTOWN — Alecia Forester said that if her 13-year-old daughter had not woken up when she did and alerted her seven siblings and two parents to a fire in the back of their home on West Boston Avenue early Sunday, everyone would have died.

“We got out just in time. If she wouldn’t have woke us up, we wouldn’t have ever made it out,” she said.

“She was upstairs in her room, and she said she heard a big boom, and she thought something had happened to her sister downstairs. Her sister was sleeping in the living room, so she went to check on her sister, and that’s when she seen the fire, and she came and woke everybody up,” Forester said.

“She was like ‘Mom get up, there’s a fire, there’s a fire.’ And that’s when I woke my husband up. And we all got out, but the kids were already out. She made sure everybody went out. Everybody was upstairs except my daughter who was downstairs.”

A Youngstown fire report states a caller notified the fire department of the fire at 490 W. Boston Ave. at 5:52 a.m. When firefighters arrived, they made contact with the family and learned that all 10 members had gotten out safely. It listed the children’s ages as 17, 15, 14, 13, 12, 10, 9 and 7.

The report states that the fire began on an “exterior balcony, unenclosed porch” and the cause of the fire is “under investigation.”

The report estimates the damage to the structure as being $7,000 to the property and $7,000 to the contents. It estimates the value of the 1,384-square foot, two-story home prior to the fire as being $16,330.

Alecia Forester said she and her family have lived at the house for four years, and they were hoping they might buy it from their landlord. She said they never purchased renter’s insurance and the fire destroyed all of their clothes and everything else.

“Right now, we have nothing. We have to start over from scratch,” she said. “Apparently it was arson. Someone tried to set the house on fire. I don’t know why. We don’t bother anybody.”

She said it’s her understanding that gas was poured around the side of the porch, and around the house.

Charles Hodge, Youngstown fire investigator, said Monday the cause of the fire is “suspicious,” and samples were taken and sent to the lab for analysis, but it will probably take about a week to know the results. He said he can’t say for sure right now what the official cause was.

Alecia Forester said her family has lost many mementos related to her parents and a son who died.

“I had personal pictures that were up that are just gone. A lot of sentimental things are just gone,” she said.

NEIGHBOR

A next door neighbor, Darla Ballinger, said she became aware of the fire because her dog “jumped up because apparently she was aware of something. And when I opened my eyes, I noticed my room was aglow orange. And I grabbed my phone, and I came over to the hallway,” she said.

She looked through a spare room of her house that is next to the Forester’s back porch. “It was all aglow,” she said of the curtain of the spare room.

“I lifted it, and of course I saw fire,” Ballinger said. “I dialed 911 and I said there is a fire at 490 West Boston, and it appears to be out of control. He said to me ‘Is anybody in the house?’ I said ‘Yes there is at least eight children, two adults and a dog in that house.’

“He said ‘Can you go and see what you could do to help them get out,’ and I said yes,” Ballinger said. “And just as I was going over to the front yard, that’s when their front door opened, and all of them came pouring out,” she said.

Ballinger’s house sustained “significant heat damage to vinyl siding and underlayment” on the side of her house closest to the Forester’s house, the fire report states.

When a firefighter learned that Ballinger lived in the house next door, he advised her to get her dog and two cats out of her house, which she did. At some point, she saw the Forester’s dog outside safely also, she said.

It didn’t take long for her to think back to a December 2018 fire on Parkcliffe Avenue about a block away where five children died, she said.