CORDOVA – A Cordova man tried to put out the fire that destroyed his family’s home Monday afternoon, but he was too late.

Ronald Huggins II says he was watching TV in the master bedroom of the Parvis Road residence when he walked to the kitchen to get the food he was cooking. That’s when he noticed fire on the back porch, reaching up to the roof, he said.

Huggins ran and got a fire extinguisher, picked up some dirty pants by the washing machine to put over his face and went back to the fire, he said. But by the time he got back to the fire, “it was too big and too hot,” Huggins said.

So he went to use the phone, but got no dial tone. He then had to run to a neighbor’s house for help, he said.

Click here to view a slideshow of photos from the fire.

The call to the Orangeburg Department of Public Safety came in at 2:26 p.m., Lt. Anthony Robinson said. When ODPS arrived, “The whole back was already gone.”

One of the firefighters, PSO Mike Jones, suffered a sprained ankle fighting the fire when part of the ceiling collapsed above him, Robinson said. The officer was transported to the Regional Medical Center.

Robinson said the cause of the fire, “Is still a mystery to me.”

It is for Huggins, too, who said, “There’s no telling how the fire got started.”

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